A wide range of potential Edge Computing use cases can be enabled or enhanced by bringing computing, data storage and processing and AI/analytics closer to the end user. By pushing computing out closer to these locations, users benefit from faster, more reliable services, while companies benefit from the flexibility and scalability of hybrid cloud computing.

So what are the applications and use cases that make Edge Computing real?

Media

Over-the-top (OTT) media services are increasingly relying on Edge Computing to enhance their live and on-demand streams. OTT media services need to guarantee a low-latency, high-performance experience not just with their video stream but the additional features as well, from advertising to interactive features complementing the stream, all at a massive scale. The bulk of the computing for many of these features can take place on the end-user device, so there is no need to send every bit of data back to a central server for processing.

Building Tiered Architecture

Edge Computing is a crucial component of a tiered architecture. It is designed to be near the data source, allowing direct interaction with applications in a low latency design. The proximity allows for the deployment of data directly to end users, driving a better, more connected experience. In today’s always-on, remote culture, real-time nearby data access and application deployment are key to maintaining successful interpersonal connections.

Edge Gaming

One of Edge Computing’s key benefits is enhancing performance by placing code and content closer to the user. Typically, gamers play across networks involving distant cloud installations, accruing the latency that comes with longer distances. Low latency is extremely important for video game players and eSports. When workloads run at the Edge of the network (instead of being sent to a few centralised locations for processing), data need only to travel the minimum necessary distance, reducing associated lag time and enabling more interactive and immersive in-game experiences. Furthermore, game providers also have a substantial financial incentive to offer their games on the Edge. Gaming content providers usually pay high fees to provide their games through gaming consoles. If they can offer the same game on the Edge, they can reduce their distribution cost significantly.

Content Delivery

The original Edge Computing use case. Content delivery can be vastly improved by caching content – music, video stream, or web pages – at the Edge. Edge caching provides a massive improvement over traditional web servers, providing latency on the order of single milliseconds. Content providers are looking to distribute CDNs even more widely to the Edge, thus guaranteeing flexibility and customisation on the network depending on user traffic demands.

Hyperscalers Need an Edge Too

In this heightened, high-stakes business environment, hyperscalers also need to bring their storage and compute infrastructure closer to end users to lower network costs and improve the performance of their products for the customers in the regions in which they are deployed. Doing so means that those providers that deploy their services as close to their end users as possible can gain an edge over their competitors from the improved performance and increased quality of experience resulting from the lower latency accessible through Edge Computing.

Improving digital experiences

As consumer expectations continue to rise and the need for 24/7 access to information becomes the standard, Edge Computing is used to drive faster, more secure digital experiences for end-users across industries of all kinds. Data at the Edge improves the experience for everything from video downloads, to AI or machine learning, to putting crucial medical data into a doctor’s hands faster.

Wrapping Up

Our worlds are all interconnected, seeing access to greater capabilities at faster speeds every day. These are just a few of the use cases of Edge Computing that demonstrate how it is fueling digital transformation across many industry verticals and functions it supports.

Of course, the many benefits of edge computing come with some additional complexity in terms of scale, interoperability and manageability.

Edge deployments often extend to many locations with minimal (or no) IT staff or that vary in physical and environmental conditions. Edge stacks also often mix and match a combination of hardware and software elements from different vendors. Highly distributed edge architectures can become challenging to manage as infrastructure scales out to hundreds or thousands of locations.

TM Edge portfolio addresses these challenges by helping organisations standardise on modern hybrid cloud infrastructure, providing an interoperable, scalable and contemporary edge computing platform that combines the flexibility and extensibility of open source with the power of a rapidly growing partner ecosystem.

TM Edge portfolio allows organisations to build and manage applications across hybrid, multi-cloud, and Edge locations, increasing app innovation, speeding up deployment and updating and improving overall efficiency.

Driverless cars. Autonomous robots. Smart cities.

A few years ago, these would have sounded like the core ingredients of a futuristic Sci-Fi movie. Today, they are a living and breathing reality. Thanks, in part, to edge computing.

Edge computing is revolutionising our lives and our businesses in ways we’ve never imagined or experienced before.

Edge computing allows companies to enhance how they manage and utilise physical assets to create innovative and novel interactive experiences. When combined with other technologies such as 5G, IoT, connected devices, containers, and SDN, to name a few, the potential of edge computing becomes almost limitless.

That’s something that organisations in the Asia Pacific and ASEAN regions will experience, according to research from Research and Markets, in the coming years. The mobile edge computing market in these regions is expected to grow by 34.3% annually with a total addressable market cap of $5,917 million over 2021-2030.

According to a study by GlobalData, the overall market for edge will touch US$17.8 billion by 2025 and APAC will account for 26.4% of spending.

This uptick is due to increasing interconnected devices in the regions, mobile data traffic, the rising need to improve end-user experience, and the demand for low-latency processing and real-time automated decision-making solutions.

In order to make the most of edge computing, we must understand what it really is and how it works, its benefits, and how to implement an effective edge computing strategy. Let’s take a closer look at edge computing.

What is Edge Computing and How it Works

Edge computing enables the distribution of application processes at the edge of the network and as near to the user as possible. This drastically reduces latency, enables faster data transmission, and significantly speeds up processes, compared to a larger, centralised data centre.

This essentially means instead of transmitting raw data to a central data centre for processing and analysis, this process takes place where the data is generated. For instance, data generation, processing and analysis happens at a factory floor, a retail store, or across a smart city. The outcome of all of this computing—equipment maintenance prediction, real-time business insights, and other actionable insights—is sent back to the main data centre for review.

An Accenture study states: “Edge computing uses locally generated data to enable real-time responsiveness to create new experiences, while at the same time controlling sensitive data and reducing costs of data transmission to the cloud.”

That’s something traditional forms of computing—where data is produced at the user’s computer and generated and stored in a data centre—can’t achieve. Simply because it will not be able to withstand the increasing number of devices and the volume of data generated by those devices in the near future.

Consider this: According to Gartner, 75% of enterprise-generated data will be created outside of centralised data centres by 2025.

This makes the need for edge computing even more pressing.

The Benefits of Edge Computing

Edge computing is on the rise and for good reason: It creates win-wins for multiple stakeholders. Its benefits span functions—including business and technology operations,—and adopters—from enterprises and end-users to platforms, such as OTTs.

• Better Application Performance: By moving compute and storage closer to where users are and where data is being created and processed, edge computing can generate higher levels of application performance because it both lowers latency, and increases the volume of data that can be dispatched over networks, and processed. This applies to applications used by employees working from home or in a distributed environment, and for applications that are receiving inputs from local sensors such as smart traffic systems that digest and process data from cameras and traffic radars, among others..
   
• Increased Efficiency and Resilience: Combining the power of the Internet of Thing (IoT) and machine learning can produce a range of enterprise applications that can heighten operational efficiency. Predictive maintenance of capital-intensive, business-critical factory equipment is a case in point. In most predictive maintenance implementations, a lot of machine telemetry is pre-processed at the edge. This enables greater efficiency outcomes for the business—which can lower asset downtime and lengthen their lifetime value. It also aids IoT installations, which witness higher connectivity and networking cost-efficiencies and increased application uptime.
   
• Improved Security Posture: Many edge computing applications need to process sensitive and highly-regulated information such as Personally Identifiable Information (PII), for example. Take the case of utilising vision AI at toll gates, or entry points that employ automated access-control software. Biometric data—in the form of thumb prints or video-grabs of faces—represent sensitive data which needs to be handled with care. Edge computing offers enterprises the ability to store and process such data without exposing it to cloud platforms that could infringe on data sovereignty laws.
   
• Enhanced Customer Experience and Innovation: Real time, data-rich applications—that depend heavily on edge computing architectures—are the foundation for new services that produce unparalleled levels of customer experience and innovation. It can, for instance, revolutionise in-stadium experiences at live sporting events. By bringing together the power of 5G and edge computing, stadiums can enrich the experience of fans, while building new revenue streams, and spawning competitive differentiation. Now, fans can access live, high-definition feeds from a number of cameras—something they have never had before–and stitch their own content, as if they were mini-broadcasters. They can also leverage new layers of real-time game analytics and embed those in their own content.
   

The Power of TM Edge Computing

TM Global offers an edge compute platform that enables a distributed Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) infrastructure that brings computation and data storage closer to the location of the user or applications. TM Global provides TM Edge facilities that are closer to the edge of TM’s network, end users, and devices, delivering fast services with minimal latency.

With TM Edge computing, gain wide coverage, faster delivery, low latency, high availability, and better security. Step into a new world of possibilities with TM Edge Computing.

TM Edge Gaming: Revolutionising Edge Gaming

If you do a quick search for edge computing use cases, you will not find a blog, research report, or a solution guide that doesn’t mention gaming.

There’s a good reason for that. Over the past two years, gaming as an industry has grown manifold. Globally, today, there are over 1.48 billion players and 55% of those are in the Asia Pacific region.

The advancement of gaming applications, the lockdowns induced by the pandemic, access to anywhere, anytime gaming, and an immersive, life-like gaming experience are some of the many drivers.

At the same time, edge computing has been quietly greasing its wheels to accelerate and enhance the gaming experience. In our previous blogs, you’ve read about the trends [link], in the gaming market that are shaping the gaming industry such as the rise of AR and VR, the advent of the multiverse and metaverse, etc. We also discussed the benefits [link] edge computing offers to the gaming industry and gamers. Some of them include, high bandwidth, better performance, and faster speed.

This is why, cloud gaming companies are looking to build edge servers as close to gamers as possible in order to provide a fully responsive and immersive gaming experience.

Gaming content suppliers can gain a huge financial incentive by avoiding paying high fees to distribute their games through gaming consoles. By offering the same games on the edge, they can reduce their distribution costs significantly.

But how does edge computing make that happen? It enables the distribution of gaming application processes at the edge of the network and as near to the user as possible. This enables faster data transmission, and significantly speeds up the gaming experience, compared to a larger, centralised data centre.

Today, edge gaming is becoming a hot favourite of ISPs and telcos, hyperscalers, game developers and OTTs.

And most of that action is happening in the Asia Pacific region. If you happen to be in Asia in the gaming industry, then you’re in the right place at the right time. Consider this: China is gradually becoming the hub of edge gaming research, where nine of the top 10 edge gaming companies that hold patents are in China.

Clearly, it is an imperative for gaming companies in Asia to partner with an edge gaming provider that understands the market, has extensive PoPs, and provides tremendous benefits to both gaming providers and end users.

Telekom Malaysia (TM), with its edge gaming offering is armed with everything you need.

TM Edge Gaming: Game Face On

TM Edge Gaming is a holistic edge gaming ecosystem that leverages TM’s edge facility located closer to the end user to provide a delightful digital gaming experience. TM Edge Gaming is compatible with all devices and operating systems and also provides API integration with ISPs for a smoother end user experience.

TM Edge Gaming covers both the infrastructure and service components that are essential for enhancing the gaming experience. TM’s edge facilities house GPU based PoPs and associated CPU switches. It also provides upstream and downstream connectivity and last-mile delivery. These infrastructure components are crucial for gaming companies to ensure faster download speeds and better performance. Its backend systems provide game server provisioning and customer base management, among others.

TM can double up as a telco provider and an edge gaming provider that delivers an end-to-end solution that ensures gaming services are always on. Another advantage of partnering with TM is that it is a major telco player in Southeast Asia, and can help gaming providers explore this new and emerging gaming market.

TM provides cloud gaming services, wherein, it is a game subscription service that allows customers to access a full library of online video games from multiple publishers.

It also provides access to eSports, which is a gaming community and an amalgamation of friendly competitive video games where teams or individuals compete against each other in a tournament for a reward.

TM Edge Gaming provides extensive benefits for both service providers and end users. Service providers can now pay-as-you-grow, scale capacity requirement, and go to market faster. TM Edge Gaming enables gamers to enjoy ultra-low latency gaming experiences with stable connectivity and faster streaming speeds. With edge gaming, gamers don’t have to download games to their devices, they can now play on-the-go and on any device of their choice.

All you have to do is partner with TM. It’s time to play in the big league. Start drafting your game plan with TM Edge Gaming today.