The world filled with digital innovation & technologies like IoT, 5G wireless network & embedded AI is continued to further the pace of change; and with this change of technology millions of apps are coming on line to monitor, measure, process, analyse, react to seemingly storm of endless data. The high growth in IoT is explosive, impressive – and sometime unsustainable under current architectural approaches. Many IoT deployments are facing challenges related to latency, network bandwidth, reliability and security, which cannot be addressed in cloud-only models.
Fog computing adds a hierarchy of elements between the cloud and endpoint devices, and between devices and gateways, to meet these challenges in a high performance, open and interoperable way.
Fog computing is a system-level horizontal architecture that distributes resources and services of computing, storage, control and networking anywhere along the continuum from Cloud to Things. It is a:
Horizontal architecture: Support multiple industry verticals and application domains, delivering intelligence and services to users and business
Cloud-to-Thing continuum of services: Enable services and applications to be distributed closer to Things, and anywhere along the continuum between Cloud and Things
System-level: Extend from the Things, over the network edges, through the Cloud, and across multiple protocol layers – not just radio systems, not just a specific protocol layer, not just at one part of an end-to-end system, but a system spanning between the Things and the Cloud
Benefits:
- Ultra-low latency
- Business agility
- Added security
- Realtime analytics
- Reduced cost
- Less bandwidth and network load
Conclusion:
Almost all industry verticals need fog computation – smart cities, manufacturing, retail, automotive, smart building etc. IDC predicts that by 2025, nearly 45% of the world’s data will be moved closer to the network edge. Fog is the only architecture to withstand this amount of data and enable IoT, 5G and AI.
Reference:
Openfogconsortium