Forget cloud computing, fog calculation is the future

Like all the people you meet, I am also convinced of the transformative power of cloud computing. Smartphones keep searching and retrieving data, but no cloud loses its meaning; I also believe that if companies do not rush to push data and software to third party data centers, they may be at risk of being undermined by unknown competitors.

But cloud advocates have always talked about the shift to cloud computing in the coming days. Many companies are selling cloud business to you based on this idea.

The reality is that data entry is more difficult to derive from the cloud than most engineers or at least their managers are willing to admit.

The problem is in bandwidth. If your company only wants to reduce the cost and hassle of storing its own data, the cloud is the best choice, and all you need to do is to transfer data back and forth through high-speed networks.

But in the interconnected world, people need to get information through a lot of mobile devices, and bandwidth becomes rather slow. Any business that needs to transmit data to a mobile device, whether it is the system that the user subscribes to the ticket or the business data used by the mobile salesperson, will face the problem of wireless speed. Overall, according to the World Economic Forum (economic Forum), the United States ranks only 35th place in terms of broadband access per user.

That's one reason why mobile apps are now the first way people do things online, at least on smartphones. Part of the data and processing performance is done on your device.

As more and more objects become intelligent, or are able to sense the environment, access the Internet, and even remotely accept instructions, we become increasingly focused on how to accomplish what we need to deal with when we rely on the cloud. Everything from the aircraft engine to the fridge is joined to the wireless network, forming the Internet of things.

Now the 3G and 4G mobile phone network speed is not fast enough to real-time data generated by the device to the cloud. And as all the ordinary appliances in the home and office are joined, the situation is only getting worse.

Fortunately there is a clear solution: Stop concentrating on the cloud and start looking for solutions to the task of generating data streams from the storage and processing networks by the appliance itself or between the appliance and the network.

Marketers at Cisco BAE have taken a name for the phenomenon: fog calculations.

I like the word. Yes, it makes you want to look like the American TV star Lize Le Mont Liz Lemon. But like the previous cloud, this is a marketing term for some kind of emerging phenomenon, which is a good visual metaphor.

The cloud floats in the sky, high above, unreachable, deliberately abstract, but the mist is realistic, right in front of you. It is not made up of powerful servers, but consists of a weaker, more decentralized variety of functional computers, seeping into appliances, factories, automobiles, street lights and all the supplies of our material life.

Cisco sells routers, which may be the most mundane business in the tech industry, in addition to storage. To make routers more attractive and open new markets before Chinese rivals influence their current revenue stream, Cisco wants to turn their routers into hubs for data collection and decision-making. Cisco's idea is that its smart router will never talk to the cloud unless it has to, for example, alert the operator in case of an accident with a sensor-filled rail vehicle. and routers play the role of a neural center in a rail vehicle.

IBM also has similar projects that drive computing "marginalization." As Paul Brody, the IBM executive, Paul Brody the traditional cloud-based Internet "from the Inside Out." (When people talk about edge computing, literally, this refers to the edge of the Web, the intersection of the internet and the real world.) The data center is the "center" of the network, while PCs, telephones and surveillance cameras are on the verge. )

Just as the cloud includes server clusters, in IBM's research, fog includes all the computers that surround us and relate to each other. For example, asking our smart devices to send software updates to each other, rather than passing through the clouds, could make fog a direct substitute for some of the cloud's capabilities.

The main thing is that we have too much data. And we're just getting started. Airplanes are a good example. On the new Boeing 747 aircraft, almost every part is connected to the network, constantly logging data about its state, or in some cases sending the data stream. GE says a jet engine of a plane can generate 512GB (half of 1TB) of data.

Cheap sensors generate large amounts of "big" data, and the value of the data is unexpected. By so-called pre-sentencing analysis, companies such as GE can know which parts of the jet engine need to be maintained even before the plane lands.

If not, why would Google and Facebook talk about alternative Internet access with balloons and drones, and so on, where carriers are unable to meet demand. Before the United States has the high-speed wireless and wired networks it should have, making the computing as close to the user as possible is the key to making things networking quick and practical.

The future part of most business operations will remain in the cloud, but where will the real transformative operations of the future be? It will be here, on the objects around us--in the mist.