5G may shift from hype to reality this year, given its increased availability and as more organisations identify use cases for them.

According to Telstra’s APAC Transformation Vision report, 45% of organisations in Asia Pacific that increased their IT spending were investing on wireless networks such as 4G, 5G and related services.

Geraldine Kor, Telstra’s managing director for South Asia and country managing director for Singapore, explains that organisations are doing so to” transform customer experiences and support the shift to remote and hybrid work.

“5G will be the foundation for augmented and virtual reality applications, IoT, industrial automation, smarter cities, faster set up of remote sites, and the future of digital business. But organisations need to first ensure they understand what 5G encompasses, the technology infrastructure required, and its role in digital transformation,” she adds.

Gaining an edge with edge computing The rise of 5G will also drive the adoption of edge computing, more so as organisations become increasingly reliant on data.

“The rollout of 5G provides even greater connectivity, allowing businesses to embrace new technologies as well as leverage and analyse massive amounts of data at the edge for faster speed-to-insights. We foresee businesses in the region turning to smart edge computing to help quickly analyse data, while reducing latency and costs,” says Mark Micallef, Cloudera’s VP for Asia Pacific and Japan.

He went on to share how edge computing can help improve the maintenance process. “Many industries in APAC are still working under the corrective maintenance process, where maintenance is done based on data collected, such as mean time to failure and mean time to repair.”

“With smart edge computing, we will start seeing a shift towards preventive, and eventually predictive maintenance processes, which will allow businesses to predict issues before they run-to-failure. It is essentially taking preventive maintenance a step further to make real-time decisions.”

Echoing his sentiments, Parimal Pandya, Akamai’s vice president for Sales and managing director for Asia Pacific, adds:“[Market research firm] IDC found that almost 67% of businesses are currently investing in edge infrastructure required to provide technology and experience parity - and ensuring a frictionless, secure user experience is critical in enabling employees to maintain high levels of productivity and effectiveness regardless of location.”

See also: <a class='gtm_see_also_2_inread' style='text-decoration: underline;' href='/digitaledge/focus/developing-robust-ai-strategies?utm_source=website&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=ONPAGESEO'>Developing robust AI strategies</a>

“Additionally, for businesses that need to make decisions based on data that is changing in real-time, they can look towards leveraging the edge as part of their IT infrastructure, and adopt edge related solutions, which can deliver the real-time computing needed for businesses to meet rising demand for personalised digital experiences, when and where users want it.”

Making edge computing work

Despite the benefits of edge computing, Micallef advises organisations to evaluate their business processes before embracing edge capabilities. “They need to determine the approach and strategies that best fit the unique needs of their business, where edge capabilities are a means of benefitting the entire organisation and not just to solve specific problems.”

As the adoption of edge computing will result in the creation of a massive amount of data, organisations also need to ensure they can overcome data gravity.

Data gravity describes the effect that as data accumulates, there is a higher likelihood that additional services and applications will be attracted to the data, essentially having the same effect gravity has on objects around a planet.

Mark Smith, managing director for APAC at Digital Realty, says: “According to our Data Gravity Index, data gravity intensity growth across 53 global metros will reach a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 139% through 2024.”

“With the influx of data, data gravity can be a significant obstacle, potentially inhibiting workflow performance, creating security risks, increasing costs and more. Businesses will need to address these gravity barriers in order to reap the benefits of digital transformation.”

To stay ahead of the latest tech trends, <a class='gtm_see_also_3_inread' style='text-decoration: underline;' href='/section/digitaledge?utm_source=website&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=ONPAGESEO'>click here for DigitalEdge Section</a>

One way of addressing data gravity, he says, is through a connected data community approach that allows for integration between core, cloud and edge at centres of data exchange.

“[This is why] Digital Realty’s industry manifesto for open interconnection outlines a new collaborative roadmap to integrate interconnection platforms with multiple partners and build the industry's largest open fabric of fabrics connecting centres of data to tackle the challenges of data gravity head-on.”

Photo: <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/OKOOGO578eo">Nastya Dulhiier/Unsplash</a>

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