Back when the cloud started being called the cloud, it was a vague idea that was hard to wrap our heads around. For some, it’s still an enigma. “My data is hosted in clouds?”

Now, the terminology is getting even foggier. Enter “fog computing,” name because instead of being centralized in a cloud, data and process is dispersed in a wider footprint to reduce latency and speed up delivery. 

All of the innovations we cover—drones, AI, IoT, VR/AR, etc.—require massive amounts of computing power…in real time. A lot of times, needs aren’t met solely by cloud hosting. That’s why the edge has become another big topic as of late to move digital assets and processing closer to the end user. 

Industrial applications are a great example. Think about an autonomous heavy machine in the field, a digital twin of an offshore oil rig, drones working in remote wind farms, and more. The latency caused by sending data to the cloud makes “real time” less real time, when milliseconds matter. 

Fog computing—which decentralizes data collection, processing, and analysis—can help these edge applications run at the speeds required to make them useful. 

All of these changes are going to give me brain fog! Which is less efficient than fog computing. But maybe better than having my head in the clouds.