How Edge Computing Takes Advantage of Data Fabric

The health crisis caused by COVID-19 has accelerated digital transformation in companies. In this scenario, Edge Computing stands as an effective solution to the challenge faced by organizations to improve productivity and optimize costs.

This technology is based on economizing the management of the data received by IoT devices (smart speakers, access control systems, etc.), and that the device itself controls that information. Following the commitment of companies to invest in this technology, International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts in its study that this year Edge Computing will reach 40,000 million dollars of investment in Europe and 65,000 million in 2025, thus creating new business opportunities for the development of disruptive industries and services in the region.

Thanks to its ability to bring computational resources closer to where the data originates, a device that integrates the Edge solution drastically reduces the time it takes to obtain information. Thus, it allows business decisions to be developed outside the central environment (the company’s database, the main cloud system, among others).

However, there are two very important potential challenges to consider: the privacy of the data and the reliability of the networks through which the data is transmitted from the storage points to the place of destination.

Data Fabric Provides Edge Computing with Better Performance and Cost Reduction

In this sense, Logical Data Fabric technologies connect databases quickly and accurately, acting as a bridge between Business and IT. Among the advantages that the Logical Data Fabric provides to Edge Computing, the following stand out:

• Versatility: Logical Data Fabric solutions can interface with messaging technologies like Kafka and geospatially oriented data sources, making it extremely flexible. They can also establish a unified semantic layer across the individual nodes and thus integrate into edge applications.
• Data Integration at the Edge: sensor and device data can be integrated with virtualization nodes at the edge, which will enable greater agility and better insights at higher levels in the IoT architecture.
• Agility in processes: By moving resources closer to the source, performance is increased and costs are reduced. The decentralization offered by this type of solution decreases response times between processes and improves bandwidth while using cloud-based applications, especially when obtaining and managing large amounts of information accurately.
• Integration, management and virtual governance of the data obtained: in order to generate useful information in making business decisions. Additionally, it minimizes data transmission and replication, which can be costly processes and pose security and compliance risks.

“Our customers use Denodo for data integration and processing at the Edge, to improve production processes. For example, they can detect

anomalies and perform predictive maintenance of machines and systems in manufacturing plants, or generate KPIs of the manufacturing processes themselves for optimization. Denodo Platform, by its very nature, adheres to the philosophy of connecting and not just collecting information. This means connecting directly with the data from its origin and transferring the processing of the information to the consumers, instead of transferring all the data and having to select the ones that add value in another solution”, affirms José Andrés García, responsible for Denodo for Iberia and Latin America.