Edge vs Enterprise Data Center: Which Is Perfect for Your Business?

It is difficult to choose a data center solution now as the business needs are evolving with time. Data centers are offering various different features to their clients. The terminology of the data centers has become more confusing with time. Thus, most normal people can’t understand the difference between different data centers. Businesses should ensure that they are selecting the best option. In this article, we are going to talk about the edge and enterprise data center.

Definition of an enterprise data center:

This is a private facility that is managed by a single private organization. They can be located off-premises or on-premises. However, most companies install them on their own premise as they will have more control over their data center.

Sometimes these data centers are also known as hyperscale data centers. These data centers are defined according to their size, capacity, ownership, and purpose. Most IT giants like Facebook and Google are using enterprise data centers. However, these are not used by small and medium-sized businesses.

Pros of Enterprise Data Center:

1. IT Visibility: The best thing about this data center is that you will have complete control over your IT infrastructure. You can use various network monitoring tools for monitoring your data center. This will give strong IT visibility to your business. You can easily track important things like power usage and bandwidth. Thus, you can check the apps that you are using the most. This will help you in determining your future data center needs. However, this benefit is not limited to on-premise data centers only. Many third-party data centers are using intelligent monitoring. It will ensure that you can check your resources without visiting the data center.
2. Compatible: You can build these data centers according to the applications and processes you are using. This will ensure that all your applications will work with these systems.

Cons of Enterprise Data centers:

1. Communication delays: If your devices are located far from your data center, then you will face lag during communication. Also, if you are using a centralized data center, then your systems might crash due to heavy loads. A centralized data center is more prone to failures and outages. It is important to ensure that your network traffic is always less than the limit. However, sometimes attackers can send excessive requests to your network due to which your network can go down.
2. Legacy Systems: Most enterprise data centers are still using legacy technology. These facilities are not ready for cloud computing. It is very expensive to maintain these legacy systems. Sometimes you can’t use the new technology due to compatibility issues.
3. Cost: You need to invest a lot of money into building and maintaining these data center facilities. Most SMBs don’t have enough money to build their own data center. You need access to a lot of materials, labor, and time for maintaining these infrastructures. This is going to be a heavy financial burden on your business.

Definition of Edge Data centers:

These data centers are mostly defined by their size and features. Edge data centers are smaller when compared with enterprise data centers. However, these data centers differ in connectivity and location. These data centers are mostly positioned in emerging markets. Companies are using these data centers for delivering their services and content to local users. Most streaming sites like Netflix and Hulu are using these data centers.

These data centers are built for speed and versatility. They are managed by colocation providers. If you want to enter a new local market, then this is the perfect data center for you.

Edge data centers can also utilize the power of IoT devices. The number of IoT edge devices is increasing with time. Thus, these data centers can use IoT devices for processing your data.

Most of the data will be collected and processed by IoT devices. However, some of the important data will be sent back to your main server. Edge facilities will ensure that this data can travel quickly.

Pros of Edge Data Centers:

1. Reduced Costs: The best thing about the edge data center infrastructure is that they are cheaper to maintain. You don’t need to invest huge capital in building these data centers. Thus, you will have access to a more predictable IT budget. It will help you in eliminating the costs of upgrading and building your own data centers.
2. Reliable: These data centers will distribute the traffic between different devices. Thus, you don’t need to worry about outages. If your edge data center is down, then you redistribute the traffic to other local data centers.
3. Minimized Lag: Edge data centers will also help you in reducing latency as the data is processed at the network edge. This will ensure that your users can quickly access your services.

Cons of Edge Data Centers:

1. Compatibility Issues: Most third parties are going to use modern architectures and operating systems for maintaining their data centers. Thus, these edge data centers are going to be less optimized for old systems. You might need to update your legacy systems for using these data centers. However, it is always a good idea to update your legacy systems.
2. Reduced IT visibility: This is another major issue with the edge data center. Some service providers won’t provide you high visibility. They won’t tell you about power consumption and peak server loads. Due to this, your IT team will be left in a dark forest. They can’t help you with improving your network performance. Also, it will become impossible to check if your partner is charging you more.

Conclusion

These are the main differences between Edge and enterprise data centers. The choice will ultimately depend on your business needs. If you need better security or compliance, then you should go for an enterprise data center. However, the costs of building and maintaining an enterprise data center are very high. Edge data centers can help you in providing your services to the local people. You can use them for entering new markets and improving your network performance. If you need more information regarding the latest networking trends, then you can contact Bleuwire.

Contact us today to learn about Bleuwire™  services and solutions in how we can help your business.