In many cases, it is simply not feasible to connect thousands or even millions of IoT devices directly to the cloud. This is where edge computing comes in: by facilitating data processing at the edge of a network – close to the source – it helps overcome some typical challenges of IoT deployments:
- Sending huge amounts of data to the cloud can lead to high network costs for data transmission. In addition, high costs for cloud storage and processing can also accrue.
- Latency can be an important consideration in IoT deployments. If it takes a long time for the cloud to process a request, this may well become an issue.