3 Tips for CIOs: Pitching Edge to Your Organization
To be successful, the modern CIO must be a master of many crafts: technology, operations, and business. They must have tactical foresight and industry knowledge to identify the right solutions that will help achieve the lofty digital transformation goals set by their company.
Edge computing has swiftly risen to the top of the CIO agenda. The edge computing revolution is underway and is changing the way businesses operate, transforming outcomes and driving growth.
But with so much misunderstanding surrounding edge, how can CIOs position it as an essential investment at the C-level? Here are three key tips:
Tip #1: Shed light on what the edge is, and its widespread benefits.
The edge can be hard to define. Put simply, edge is the point where data are created and need to be acted upon to develop immediate and essential value. It refers to the peripheries of an organization or the outside of a typical data center, out where information is gathered and consumed by people or devices. In some cases, it’s under extreme environmental conditions.
The rise of edge signals a shift of processing power from traditional data centers to the edge, and much closer to the user. Looking out several years, Gartner predicts 75% of the world’s data will be produced and consumed outside of a public cloud or data center; instead existing at the edge.
CIOs and tech leaders are aware of the current challenges in collecting, managing, and using information stored within a traditional data center. Now, imagine three-quarters of that data is suddenly transposed outside of these controlled environments
Organizations must ensure they are ready for this. Therefore, the CIO must be able to communicate the benefits of edge computing clearly and tangibly.
The edge places processing power near the edge of the network, rather than in data centers, enabling rapid decision-making with next to zero latency.
Because data teams no longer need to wait for data to transfer to the cloud or data centers for processing, operational costs are reduced while reliability and resiliency are increased. Even when dealing with poor connectivity in isolated or remote areas, data sitting at the edge is obtainable.
Additionally, increasingly popular technologies — such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) — that demand huge volumes of data will come to rely on the edge for faster and more reliable results.
Tip #2: Show why there’s value in having edge data when making real-time decisions.
When you operate at the edge, you can have an immediate positive impact on the business.
At the edge, CIOs can rapidly act on insights extracted from the vast swathes of data they now have access to.
