CTO Straight Talk - Issue 4 - 17

Agriculture. Spain, which produces 40

printers themselves - a Tier 3 device,

percent of the world's olive oil, can't

in Satynarayanan's edge computing

afford to lose any more of its olive groves

model-instead of at a nearby micro

to Xylella fastidiosa, a fast-spreading

data center in order to reduce latency

bacterial infection that has already killed

by avoiding a trip to the cloud-it does

more than a million olive trees in Italy. In

not fall within Saynarayanan's deﬁnition

an edge-like use case, Spanish farmers

of edge computing.

are using drones to gather and analyze
data about tree health, allowing them to

But it is indicative of the way in which the

spot diseased trees that still look healthy

term edge computing is likely to be used

from the ground and destroy them

in a growing variety of settings.

before the disease can spread. Because

Data centers. Companies that operate

the drones stream their data directly

their own data centers can use edge

to micro data centers over 5G wireless,

computing to gather and act on data

farmers can receive information literally
on the ﬂy instead of needing to land their
drones periodically to connect them to

about the infrastructure to improve
performance, control costs, and
optimize resource in real time. Of course,

a computer and send the data on to the

companies can monitor and analyze this

cloud for analysis.

information by transmitting it all the way

Office operations. Imaging and

to the public cloud and back, but because

electronics company Ricoh recently

cooling accounts for up to 40 percent

introduced its Ricoh Smart Integration

of a data center's power consumption,

cloud platform, which links the

shaving even a few fractions of a

company's multifunction printers

second off the time it takes to optimize

to other nearby products, including

temperature, humidity, and power usage

interactive whiteboards, uniﬁed

can lead to signiﬁcant cost savings.

communications and collaboration

THE CUTTING EDGE

solutions, and even smart power strips.
Steven Burger, Head of Engineering and
Vice President Technology Marketing

Looking farther down the road, edge

for Ricoh, says the goal of this initiative

computing promises big changes for the

is to create a " smart office " capable

technology industry itself, particularly in

of recognizing nearby users in real

telecommunications. Because telecom

time and automatically preparing

carriers own and operate the wireless

their presentations, printouts, and

data networks at the infrastructure edge,

other action items without human

their data about those networks, such

intervention. Because most of the data

as information about traffic types and

processing is done on the multifunction

network congestion, will play a critical role

2020
State of the Edge, a vendor-neutral platform for edge computing
research, merges with the Open Glossary of Edge Computing to
become part of LF Edge, a Linux Foundation project focused on
creating an open, interoperable edge computing framework.
17
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 4

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of CTO Straight Talk - Issue 4
