How Shifting To The Edge May Be The Key For Hypergrowth Startups

Rafael Umann is the CEO of Azion.

The potential for a global recession should raise alarm at any company. But this is especially true for “hypergrowth” startups that are in the most critical phase of their expansion since they’ve typically attained substantial momentum and can’t afford to slow down.

Unfortunately, a cooling economy threatens to take away the funding and resources needed for these companies to keep growing. Q3 in 2022 marked the largest quarterly drop in a decade for global venture funding, and while the “Great Resignation” is slowing, it’s certainly not over. Sustaining growth in this climate will likely require doing more with less.

Depending on a startup’s needs, one possible way to adapt to the times is to consider shifting application development to edge computing. If organizations are struggling with security, customer satisfaction, cost or achieving the flexibility needed to make big changes, edge infrastructure may have a transformational impact.

If you are thinking about embracing edge computing, there’s some important advice to keep in mind. This article will explore the benefits, some common concerns that the edge might resolve and a few important notes to keep in mind for creating your edge strategy.

Vendor lock-in can cause headaches—consider a multi-vendor strategy.

Startups that have built their applications around a single cloud provider may find that they are unable to move away from that provider—also known as “vendor lock-in.” If a provider relies heavily on proprietary services and doesn’t support open standards, moving your applications to another platform will be expensive and time-consuming.

From startups to large enterprises, resources are often tight, so if vendor lock-in is a problem you face, you might consider building applications around an edge platform instead. Most edge platforms embrace open standards, so your company can use that platform as a hub to connect to many clouds at once or run on any infrastructure. From there, you can build a multi-vendor solution, and if you need to stop using a specific cloud, you should have no problem removing it from your list of infrastructure partners. Even if you decide to move away from the edge platform, you can easily move to any other solutions that rely on open standards.

If latency and outages are concerns, the edge may help.

By design, edge computing infrastructure lives close to the end devices that generate and receive data. This makes it possible to achieve lower latency between users and edge infrastructure than cloud data centers will allow. So if your use case demands minimum latency, such as end-user shopping or entertainment consumption, or even ultra-fast AI for self-driving cars, taking advantage of the edge is highly advisable for the best results.

Even if latency is not a critical factor, the edge could still provide value if you are concerned about outages taking down your applications. Because edge computing infrastructure is geographically distributed, a failure in any one node has a limited impact, and traffic can quickly be redirected to other nodes, keeping performance high. This can be an effective way to present a business case for edge computing, as it can help to prevent periods of poor performance, which cost the average organization $600,000 a year.

Regulatory compliance is a challenge.

As laws are constantly changing, it’s becoming much harder to handle government regulations regarding data privacy. In the last few years, rigorous new legislation like the California Consumer Privacy Rights Act has introduced new guidelines, and laws like Australia’s Privacy Penalty Bill have massively increased the fine for violating pre-existing guidelines. For companies that just do business in one locale, compliance is relatively straightforward, as there’s only one set of data rules with which to comply. But when there are dozens of international laws to acknowledge, it can be overwhelming, especially for startups new to navigating the market.

The edge offers an alternative. Each edge infrastructure component (or “node”) is tied to a specific location, so each node only has to comply with one set of laws. This can make it much easier to ensure that data handling is always compliant with applicable regulations.

Building and managing infrastructure can be cost-prohibitive.

As with any innovative technology, there are a few common points of concern that often come up when discussing the possibility of adopting edge infrastructure. Depending on where your edge footprint will be placed, setting up nodes could be cost- and time-intensive. If this hurdle would prevent your firm from pursuing the edge, it may be worth leveraging a serverless edge platform instead.

In this model, a third party has already established edge infrastructure with nodes worldwide. While you do not have control over the infrastructure as you would if you built it yourself, it represents a substantially easier way to begin realizing the benefits of the edge while a third party maintains the infrastructure and ensures it is robust and resilient.

While the edge is not a panacea that will fix every challenge companies are currently facing, it could be an important strategy to ease certain common pain points. Companies that need to avoid vendor lock-in, minimize latency, reduce costs and navigate regulations may benefit from moving to the edge. Although setting up your own edge nodes could be challenging, adopting serverless application development offers an alternative. And because edge computing is a prerequisite for technologies like modern facial recognition and cashier-less point-of-sale systems, embracing the edge now could offer new benefits over time.

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