Edge computing is moving into all types of commercial buildings, according to an article from Building Operating Management on the FacilitiesNet website.

Manufacturers and retail establishments already are using this information road less traveled. While the experts aren’t saying edge computing will penetrate the commercial building marketplace tomorrow, they are quick to note edge computing will be handling data from billions of devices and sensors by 2020.

“Edge computing is a way to place data closer to its point of use, thereby reducing latency and cost,” said Tim Kittila, general manager, data center, Parallel Technologies.

Partially, this rapid penetration is because edge computing is mature by computer development standards, which often is measured in months. More importantly, Internet of Things (IoT) devices are so numerous that they’re clogging cloud and web services with data. Not to mention that video streaming, which helps catch criminals in the act everywhere from the local convenience store to the multi-story high-rise building, does so by employing phenomenal amounts of bits and bytes. 

Before IoT’s proliferation, everyone became accustomed to the nearly instantaneous results of modern compute speeds. Today, so much data streams across the Internet, flowing into and out of web servers and the cloud, that traffic is getting bogged down on the information superhighways.

Read the article.