Why private edge networks are gaining popularity in the enterprise right now

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Unleashing the value of real-time data from the edge on secure, scalable mobile platforms that deliver intuitive experiences is the future of private edge networks. The rapid growth of edge computing continues to attract many competitors, from startups to global telecom providers, all aiming to become a platform standard.

Alef’s launch this week of a mobile toolkit they claim businesses can use to deploy an edge network in 60 minutes without 5G is the latest example of the innovation driving the market. Alef’s goal is to prioritize users’ needs for a more intuitive, understandable way to leverage the benefits of edge platform-as-a-service (PaaS), peer-to-peer edge, and private edge networks .

Alef’s expertise in APIs, building strong developer relationships and a solid track record of enabling enterprise mobile applications with EdgeNet as the mobile abstraction layer help create the mobile network axis market -a service (MNaaS). Dominant competitors in the edge PaaS market currently include Avassa, F5 Volterra Voltstack, KubeEdge, and others. In addition, Alef competes in the peer-to-peer edge computing market with Equinix, Fastetto, mimik technology, Rajant, Storj and others.

What is driving the rapid growth of private edge computing?

Business leaders are rapidly accelerating their digital transformation strategies to support new business initiatives and growth strategies in 2022. PwC found that 60% of executives said digital transformation is their top growth driver this year. Real-time data is an essential fuel for any successful digital transformation, intuitively.

The demand for real-time data and insights within enterprises is a strong growth catalyst for edge computing. IDC predicts that global spending on edge computing will reach $176 billion by 2022, and is expected to grow to $274 billion by 2025. By 2023, more than 50% of enterprise-generated data is expected to be created and processed outside of the data center or in the cloud, up less than 10% in 2019. Gartner’s 2021 Hype Cycle for Edge Computing includes 33 technologies this year, most of which are now in the Innovation Trigger phase of the hype cycle.

Alef’s new product announcement aims to improve the productivity of mobile developers, enabling them to get more value from real-time edge-based applications and the data they produce. The fuel fueling each of the hype cycle’s 33 technologies is real-time data captured on smart sensors and other edge devices.

Getting the proper configuration, latency, and security of the private edge network is critical to many of the technologies showcased in Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Edge Computing, 2021.
Source: Notes From the Edge – Is Edge Computing a Hype? Gartner blog. October 5, 2021. Bob Gill.

Key factors contributing to the growth of edge computing in today’s enterprises include:

Enable Zero Trust Security to the Edge. Legacy tech stacks built entirely on trust have major gaps that cyber attackers can exploit more and more. Rapid advances in edge computing technologies are lowering the cost of self-healing endpoints, making them more affordable for all organizations. Cloud-based edge platforms also help accelerate zero trust security initiatives. Broadcom, CrowdStrike, McAfee and Microsoft lead the endpoint security market. CrowdStrike is the industry leader when it comes to Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR). Microsoft leads the broader market for endpoint security platforms. APIs are shaping the future of edge computing. For edge computing to be widely adopted in enterprises, APIs need to provide a layer of abstraction that alleviates the intensive work of developers writing code to interact with every system in a tech stack. Layers of abstraction save developers time and streamline the development of new apps. Alef’s approach looks at how they can take advantage of stable APIs to protect developers from complex tech stacks to get their work done. Edge device processors are getting more intelligent. The rapid gains in chip processor architectures make it possible to complete the capture, analysis and collection of data first at the endpoint before sending the result to cloud databases. In addition, the growing intelligence of endpoint devices makes it possible to offload more tasks, freeing up network latency in the process. The latest generation of edge-based processors is designed with instruction sets that support neural network computations. All businesses need real-time data to grow. Small gains in visibility and control within a company can yield major cost savings and profits. That’s because real-time data is very good at identifying gaps in cost, customer, revenue, and service processes. Look to edge computing to provide real-time reporting, real-time streaming analytics, and data distribution and caching, especially over sensor-based networks.

The complexity of edge networks needs to be improved

Barriers to holding private edge networks from greater adoption in enterprises are how difficult they can be to securely configure and scale across platforms. Alef prioritizes an intuitive approach to network configuration and API-based platform to solve integration challenges, which is what businesses today need to adopt private edge networks.

Alef’s platform is designed to provide mobile app developers with a development environment and tools to take advantage of 4G, LTE, 5G and certain Wi-Fi deployments without knowing the details of these diverse technologies. Their goal in creating the Mobile Toolkit is to help companies reduce the risks of misconfiguring private edge networks by simplifying the installation process.

The Mobile Toolkit contains a core set of APIs, Alef Access Point, eSIMs, devices and a walkthrough starter guide, based on the CBRS spectrum, which is publicly available. Alef’s open Edge API Platform allows enterprises to create a private mobile network within the firewall as part of their corporate network.

Athonet, Celona, ​​Federated Wireless, Geoverse, and Nokia are platform-level competitors. Alef’s bold move to create a Toolkit will inspire innovations from both startups and large-scale competitors.

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This post Why private edge networks are gaining popularity in the enterprise right now

was original published at “https://venturebeat.com/2022/04/18/why-private-edge-networks-are-gaining-popularity-in-the-enterprise-right-now/”