By: Douglas Tait

The communications industry has undergone a major paradigm shift over the past decade, significantly impacting all industries and reshaping network ecosystems. Cloud technology has laid the foundation for Artificial Intelligence (AI), leading to a revolutionary shift into all industries. AI is rapidly changing how we build networks and is accelerating cloud services into the communications space. With the cloud taking on more network processing, the Internet of Things (IoT) and edge computing have become more relevant. AI, IoT, edge, and cloud are redefining networks and creating a new network paradigm that is changing how businesses communicate. Together, these technologies create a new, interconnected and intelligent communications ecosystem, driving innovation and growth.

Edge Computing and IoT

Innovation in every industry could be enhanced by access to real-time, secure, reliable communications enabling their services. A few examples of this kind of innovation include:

• Helping first responders save more lives by quickly connecting the right personnel and information to a called-in incident.
• Enabling construction scheduling and disputes to be readily resolved by giving access to real-time data to the contractors, owners, and architects from a construction site.
• Allowing restaurants to readily adjust prices, optimize the kitchen, and better maintain inventory by connecting all the data points in real time.
• Helping factories and utilities to run more efficiently by not only monitoring their sensors in real time but allowing them to issue commands out to actuators in milliseconds.
• Enabling healthcare providers to provide better service by giving instant access to real time and historical patient data to all authorized hospital staff and clinicians.

Real-time data, or real-time communications between processes and people, has applications in every industry. Building these kinds of systems was previously fiscally impossible due to the high cost of on-premises processing and networking. Shifting most of the services to the cloud, leveraging commodity networks, and the development of more affordable end devices, are opening businesses to a new realm of possibilities.

Figure 1
click to enlarge

The key ingredients making the paradigm shift to the new network ecosystem, as depicted in Figure 1 above, include:

• Devices: affordable sensors, actuators, smart phones, video cameras, tablets, and even PCs.
• Edge Computing: the combination of a small computer, WIFI, and SIM enabled, edge computers handle local connections, aggregate data, cache, or disconnected processing, as well as local IoT device management.
• Network: reliable access through a public mobile network to either a public cloud or a private cloud.
• Industrial Cloud Applications: best-of-breed industry focused solutions.