According to this Gartner* Analysis, edge computing will significantly expand for many organizations in the coming years. By 2025, more than 50% of enterprise-managed data will be created and processed outside data centers or public clouds. Businesses that want to remain competitive or disrupt an industry must modernize to quickly adapt new digital initiatives powered by edge computing. In many cases, that includes the agile development of applications that run new workloads on the edge with new ways to process and store data.

Without a modern cloud native platform to develop, run, and deploy end-to-end distributed applications, you will be at risk of a complicated and slow solution. For example:

• A slower than expected checkout process at a retail store, causing a reduction in the overall number of sales and loss of revenue
• A broken parking kiosk to pay and exit, causing delays and dissatisfied and inconvenienced customers
• Delays in manufacturing maintenance from a bad sensor, resulting in unsuspected breakdowns

However, a problem arises when an organization needs to scale the environment of its retail or edge devices to grow from five or six to 100s or 1000s of sites. Wiring together components from many providers at scale can create a fragile, difficult to maintain solution for large-scale use cases like edge. A platform made for cloud native which includes integration into stateful storage, APIs, operators, Kubernetes runtime, and management can provide greater success rates and supportability. Platform choice is critical when you need to scale your edge applications, so you don’t miss time to market and customer opportunity.

Current state without a comprehensive cloud native platform

The right platform can add a lot of value, reduce headaches, and get application teams focused on delivery first and foremost. When creating proof of concepts for new applications, it is not uncommon for developers to test locally using available resources. These are convenient but are not usually the right infrastructure when promoting an app to production. Without a cloud native platform in place, you could run into inefficiencies including:

• Silos of app delivery for edge use cases that do not take advantage of central IT governance, cost control, performance, etc. resulting in separate management.
• Access to services from public clouds, open-source technologies, and reliance on tribal knowledge from the teams who developed the apps will be scattered and undiscoverable.
• Slow outdated devices that are managed by legacy technology are difficult to upgrade or replace will put the business in a negative position compared to their competition.

Advances in infrastructure and platforms have made what used to be slow, inflexible, and boring solutions so much better in modern times. I remember flying as a child and watching the single movie selection, played only when the airline decided to start it, on a single monitor in the front of the cabin. That was a terrible experience. Either you missed part of the movie, or you couldn’t really see it very well, or had a twisted neck after two hours. Today personalized in-seat screens offer on-demand content across a wide range of movies, TV shows, and music entertainment.

Modern times, modern platforms

Cloud native architecture provides massive flexibility for modern applications; providing availability to rapidly deploy to on-premises, in cloud, hybrid and edge environments. A cloud native platform made for solutions new and old across containers and VMs provides reliability, ease of use, and manageability for stateless and stateful workloads alike with choice of Kubernetes runtimes and reliable stateful storage solutions for all workload types.

–Luke Congdon, Sr. Director, Product Management at Nutanix