A large portion of applications, particularly enterprise apps, leverage a heterogeneous network of public clouds, private clouds, on-premise data centers, and edge. A shift toward this kind of hybrid IT infrastructure has been accelerated due to the pandemic and increased demand for high-speed networks and by extension, edge computing.

Helping meet this demand is Edge as a Service (EaaS). As defined by Edge IR, EaaS providers are “companies that offer a platform realizing distributed cloud architectures and integrating the edge of the network in the computing ecosystem.” [1]

Figure 1. Edge-as-a-Service (EaaS)

Edge-as-a-Service (EaaS) is shown in figure 1. As technology advances, consumers are demanding faster, more personalized, and more secure digital experiences, and it’s a steep challenge for existing centralized and cloud application delivery models to keep up with these expectations. [2]

Features of Edge as a Service

• Asset Discovery & Assessment of Edge Devices
• Centralized Management of Edge Devices from remote location
• Single-Click Configuration and Automate Software Lifecycle Management
• Automate Operation (Healing/Reboot)
• Predictive Analysis

Components of Edge-as-a-Service

1. Edge Devices – These Edge or IoT devices, with limited compute resources, are equipped with sensors, AI rules and stores some data locally to perform operation at the edge location. These devices communicate among themselves and communicate to Edge Servers by using protocols like REST, OPC-UA, MODBUS etc.
2. Edge Servers – These servers control the edge devices. It can schedule, manage, and distribute workloads on devices. These servers mainly run on container (Kubernetes) or on Hyperconverged Infrastructure with microservices application, which can analysis the data before sending to the enterprise server.
3. Enterprise Servers – These servers provide high process capacity and storage space to provide enterprise-level analytics and dashboards. These servers can be hosted in the public cloud or on-premises data center.

Tools for Edge-as-a-Service

• Operation Management Tool
• Data Analysis and Predictive Analysis Tool
• Automation and Orchestration Tool
• Asset Management and Discovery Tool [3]

EaaS is a promising trend in edge computing that has the potential to offer significant benefits to organizations. As the demand for real-time data processing and analysis continues to grow, EaaS providers are likely to play an increasingly important role in enabling the deployment and management of edge computing infrastructure.

References:

1. https://www.section.io/blog/edge-as-a-service-the-next-big-thing-in-tech/
2. https://cloudnativenow.com/editorial-calendar/qa-what-is-edge-as-a-service-eaas/
3. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/edge-as-a-service-eaas-varun-kaushik

Cite this article:

Gokula Nandhini K (2023), Edge-as-a-Service (EaaS), Anatechmaz, pp.86