Multicloud has the edge
A spectre is haunting the clouds - the spectre of edge computing. Blazingly fast 5G networks, AI applications and data sovereignty concerns are inevitably pushing workloads to the edge.
Vendors have seen the writing on the wall and race to deliver mashups of hardware, software and/or professional services. Are you an AWS customer? Get Outposts to have EC2 in your office. Get Wavelength to create a mini AWS zone at the edge of your telco's network. Similar stories from Microsoft with Azure Stack and Google with Anthos.
To get a better view:
- In 2020, analysts predict that edge computing will make a leap (Forrester, Gartner).
- The Register goes over AWS Outposts, Local Zones and Wavelength with Adrian Cockcroft. If you are wondering how much Outposts cost, it is not cheap. Adam Leventhal did a deep dive into pricing.
- Google gives a technical overview of Anthos. For a more high level overview, this article from Forbes is still relevant. In an interesting twist, parts of Anthos can also run on AWS and Azure.
- ZDnet's Marey Jo Foley explains Microsoft Azure Arc, Azure Stack Hub and Azure Stack Edge here.
- VMware is betting on Project Pacific, which brings Kubernetes on top of vSphere. For a more detailed technical view, there is an interesting series of blog posts starting from here.
This is not the first time we see exciting tech in walled gardens. It can be convenient, but in the long term we are better off combining best of breed solutions, governed in a unified way. In this context, multicloud is here to stay and it will include the edge.