Edge is Everything, and Nothing

I am beginning to loathe the word edge. It’s been over-used, misused, and hijacked to a point where the word no longer means anything. The reason for this, I believe, is that edge is just a generic boundary. It’s like early humans looking at a sea and acknowledging that they’re at the end of their known world… their “edge.” Edge is a matter of perspective.

And of course, the networking and computing industries have many specialties and perspectives. To datacenter experts, the edge is a small datacenter closer to users; to telecom folks, the edge is a cellular tower or regional datacenter; And to IoT engineers, the edge is a small controller collecting data from sensors. Many perspectives. Many edges. I want to campaign for a simple consolidated definition for the term edge: any form of application delivery that is not cloud.

To illustrate the concept, and the multiplicity of edges, we’ve created an infographic that highlights some of the most common meanings of “edge.”

You can grab the full PDF version of this edgy infographic via the link below. So, please take a moment to download the PDF, print it out in full color, and display it in your office. And don’t forget to share it with all of your techno colleagues that might be living on the edge.

This blog was originally authored by Marcus Burton, Architect, Cloud Technology