Three Edge-Driven Tech Trends Reshaping the Future of IT

When we look at today’s global environment, the phenomena of business creation, destruction, and economic restructuring, i.e. business cycles, occur so rapidly that we are destined to accept it as normal while facing the unpredictability and chaotic nature of businesses in general.

But that’s not necessarily the case. If we look beyond the apparent disorder, we will begin to distinguish patterns, situations that are at least to some extent predictable, and their meaning.

Looking at the IT market, we can highlight various tech trends that cause a deep impact. For this blog, we selected three megatrends that seem most critical for the years to come, and that are especially driven by edge computing, having a strong affinity with the technologies offered by Azion: digital super resilience, Zero Trust, and phygital.

If you are an IT professional, we hope this vision will help you better prepare for the future in the industry and take the unpredictable to your advantage.

Tech Trend 1: Digital Super Resilience

The concept of “digital resilience” is not difficult to understand. Basically, it includes strategies to prevent, heal, and recover from in the face of changing external conditions and disruptions.

But if we add the prefix “super” to this expression, its meaning expands. The term “super resilience” came into use during the COVID-19 pandemic because it took companies’ need for resilience to a whole new level due to the unprecedented intensity of pressure and uncertainty they were subjected to. It was almost like 100 years flood concentrated in just two.

The main difference between digital resilience and digital super resilience is that the later goes beyond the strictly technological process: It considers that in order to protect the company from all possible angles —and allow it to overcome adversity and generate success— it should be viewed holistically.

The Infosys report on The Super Resilient Organization^[1] shows us that super resilience involves organizational characteristics such as:

Conceive the company as a living and dynamic organism. It must be highly sensitive to the environment to allow us to make decisions in real-time.
Prioritize the development of human aspects such as leadership, values, purpose, and, in general, to caring for people physically and mentally.
Adopt an innovation-as-usual culture: encouraging continuous innovation and learning, embracing new processes and ways of working, etc. It’s no longer enough to be smarter, faster, or cheaper at a given moment. The company can’t survive without innovation.

On the technology side, ideas and resources like modernization, microservices, datafication, artificial intelligence, and machine learning also give the business the responsiveness and resilience it needs.

How Edge Computing and Azion Fit into the Digital Super Resilience Scenario

Regarding digital super resilience, edge computing helps removing obstacles because it drastically increases speed, security, availability, and, of course, the resilience of applications by bringing them closer to users.

Azion’s Edge Computing Platform is a full-stack solution that considers your company’s IT infrastructure in a holistic way when it comes to addressing the needs of building, protecting, delivering, and observing applications closer to the end devices.

Tech Trend 2: Zero Trust

Zero Trust is a security model devised by Forrester Research based on the principle of “never trust, always verify”, and approaches the issue of cyber defense holistically. It’s applied in companies by implementing an approach that takes data, workloads, networks, users, and devices into consideration.

Statista reveals 80%^[2] of organizations are currently planning or have started to implement Zero Trust policies, which objectively confirms this model’s relevance.

The Zero Trust model is crucial when developing highly efficient strategies for managing aspects such as privacy, security, cyber governance and, the general control of yours and your clients’ data.

How Edge Computing and Azion Fit into the Zero Trust Scenario

Implementing a Zero Trust security model may be not always easy. However, there are several ways to simplify the path towards this goal.

Azion’s Edge Computing Platform contributes to this process by offering several key solutions that makes it easier for you to implement a Zero Trust approach. Here are some of these solutions.

Cybersecurity

Edge computing offers an extra layer of protection, and it is further strengthened by our Edge Firewall, our personally designed security stack. By detecting cyberattacks much earlier, malware and other cyberthreats can be stopped sooner in the network.

Compliance

Since data at the edge is processed close to the end user, your company can adapt to local laws as needed. In addition, our Web Application Firewall allows you to create custom rules to adapt to specific legislation. We are also covered by compliance certifications such as PCI DSS v4.0, SOC 2 Type 2, and SOC 3.

Observability

Solutions such as Data Stream allow you to analyze the metrics of all the applications you run at the edge in real time.

Tech Trend 3: Phygital

What do the touch screen for ordering at McDonald’s, the virtual fitting room in the Timberland store, the Amazon Go supermarket, the augmented reality glasses that Mercedes mechanics use to repair cars, and a smart city like Singapore have in common?

Phygital: the integration of the physical and digital worlds.

Considering the great diversity of technologies that phygital uses, such as IoT, VR, AR, AI, big data, and 5G, we must be aware that a large part of the physical objects in the future will be phygital.

According to Leta Capital’s State of Phygital report^[3], “Phygital revolution will lead to a dramatic redistribution of wealth and assets, primarily disrupting the offline world and acting as a gateway to the offline economy for today’s digital enterprises.”

How Edge Computing and Azion Fit into the Phygital Scenario

To operate effectively, a phygital ecosystem needs, above all, ultra-low latency and high computational power.

For example, think about the response speed required for sensor devices and controllers in a factory for it to work efficiently. Or think about the large amount of data for images and sound that is necessary to process to run a VR application.

A distributed edge computing platform with edge locations processing data close to users and devices is critical to phygital systems’ viability.

At Azion, we developed several suitable tools that take the speed and processing power further at the edge, such as Application Acceleration, Edge Cache, and Image Processor.

Do you want to see phygital technology in action? Watch this video by MyWebAR.

Conclusion

We can summarize digital super resilience as a transformation to overcome impacts and challenges, Zero Trust as the new, most complete defense strategy, and phygital as a major vector of technological innovation. And all of these trends are highly powered by edge computing.

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If you are interested in learning more about edge computing, you can consult our article What is edge computing? Or feel free to talk to one of our experts to understand how Azion can specifically help your company.