Edge computing continues to be a hot topic in technology, and every enterprise is weighing in on its evolution, which seems more relevant now than ever as the result of a global COVID-19 pandemic. So what’s IBM’s take on this rapidly developing area?

“There’s really two fairly distinct ways of thinking about the edge,” said Rob High (pictured), vice president of IBM fellow and chief technology officer of IBM edge computing at IBM Corp. One, he said, is creating edge capabilities in a company’s own network facilities, which IBM calls the “network edge.”

“The other side of the edge that … matters a lot to our enterprise businesses is those remote on-premises locations where they actually perform the work that they do where the majority of the people are, where the data that actually gets created is first formed,” he said.

High spoke with Dave Vellante, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the IBM Think Digital Event Experience. They discussed edge computing and what IBM is doing to continue to innovate in this area. (* Disclosure below.)

Taking the edge to where data is created

To High, the second way of thinking about the edge is of more interest to IBM. The company is seeing the need for placing IP workloads where data is being created and actions are being taken. If companies can do this, not only can they dramatically reduce latency, but they can also ensure continuous operations in the presence of network failures. IBM is developing products like IBM Edge Application Manager to improve these issues.

“We can manage the growth of increasing demand for network bandwidth as more and more data gets created, and we can optimize the efficiency of both the business operations as well as the IP operations in support of that,” High said. “So for us, edge computing at the end of the day is about moving work to where the data and the actions are being taken.”

While the need for placing workloads close to where data is being created and actions are being taken exists in virtually every industry, one primary example is manufacturing, according to High. With manufacturing, there is a need to be able to perform analytics on equipment as it’s being used or to analyze processes as they enfold to ensure production quality, he explained.

“If you’ve got a machine that’s welding seams on metal boxes … you want to be able to look at the quality of that seam at the moment that it’s being performed,” High stated. “If there are any problems, you can remediate that immediately rather than having that box move on down the line and find that the quality issues that were created earlier on now have exacerbated in other ways.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the IBM Think Digital Event Experience. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the IBM Think Digital Event Experience. Neither IBM, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE