Mobile Edge Computing for the Enterprise（企業におけるモバイル・エッジコンピューティング活用指針）

Edge computing has been an area of high interest in the IT world for some time now, starting with the widespread adoption of cloud computing.  But recently there has been growing interest largely due to the expansion of IoT sensor networks and the coming launch of 5G networks.  As such many new mobile edge computing services and use cases have recently entered the market, and enterprises can increasingly consider new applications of the technology in enterprise scenarios.

Increasing Interest in Edge Computing

There are two main factors which are driving the development of edge computing services.  The first is from a technology perspective, as 5G is in itself designed to offer very low latency service.  Once 5G networks are widespread, latencies will eventually come down to less than 1 millisecond, which is a vast improvement from LTE and Wi-Fi which typically have latencies of 100 milliseconds and 150 milliseconds.  Such ultra-low latency will be critical in the development of new services such as connected cars, robotics and smart factory applications.

But there is also a much more simple reason as to why interest is growing in edge computing.  For the real vision of an IoT connected world is to be realized, having billions of connected devices will put considerable strain on existing network infrastructure.  Connecting every home, car, factory etc. in the world will simply create too much data to be processed by existing datacenters and therefore more data will have to be processed on the edge of networks.  Currently about 10% of enterprise data is processed outside of the datacenter on mobile devices and sensor modules, but this figure will grow substantially in the future.