The Next Generation of Digital Government Will Depend on Edge Infrastructure

The public sector, comprising federal and state agencies, local governments and other governmental organizations, is quickly becoming far more digitally driven, with numerous initiatives ranging from smart cities to surveillance to automated applications for providing services to citizens. Most of these new apps and services will work in real time.

The demand for real-time processing to support the new services the public sector is implementing requires moving to edge infrastructure. An application that requires real-time processing, such as surveillance, can’t work if every transaction must go back and forth to a distant data center or cloud service. That would create an unacceptable lag in performance that would cripple new services such as intelligent driving and traffic control, which demands infrastructure that responds in milliseconds, not seconds. For example, an automobile traveling 40 miles per hour goes nearly 60 feet in one second, which means it could traverse two crosswalks while the traffic control data is going to the data center and back again.

But edge infrastructure does more than simply provide improved response times. It also provides local compute and storage that puts capabilities much closer to the apps and workloads. Supporting workloads closer to where they are being used makes it possible to scale both up and out more easily, with increased headroom, because several infrastructure instances are being used rather than just one. This also reduces the chance that a random event or unusual peak load will bring the entire digital process to a stop. In addition, leading edge solutions, such as those offered by Lumen and Intel, are built to scale up quickly and without any impact on service. What’s more, such modern edge infrastructure is optimized for mobility.

Another important driver of the move to the edge is the improved resiliency and availability that comes from using multiple instances of infrastructure. Although failure is rare, when one does occur, it is possible for another edge point of presence to pick up the load for the compromised instance. This improves the overall availability of the application. For intelligent mobility, surveillance and augmented and virtual reality, staying up is essential.

For many public entities, cybersecurity continues to be a critical issue. Utilization of edge infrastructure can improve security posture in various ways. First, it is possible to put another layer of secure infrastructure into the overall digital environment. Best-in-class edge infrastructure has in place such cybersecurity tools as web application firewalls, bot managers and distributed denial-of-service mitigation. The edge also provides another level of isolation for the main data center or cloud service, putting another defensive barrier in the way of attackers who want to get to the core.

Effective and fast data management and manipulation will be at the foundation of many new use cases. Using the edge to provide additional resources and capabilities for storing, processing and manipulating data enables many apps and workloads to work much faster. In addition, the ability to use data locally, rather than having to go back to a central infrastructure instance, enhances performance. The growth of new data will only increase in the future, particularly as sensors and IoT devices explode in number. Improving data management capabilities with edge infrastructure is critical to keeping up with this growth.

Public-sector entities have unique edge infrastructure needs. Two industry leaders, Lumen and Intel, are committed to delivering the next-generation edge infrastructure that meets all these demands. Lumen helps public-sector organizations with the complex contracting process for acquisition of digital solutions. Its edge infrastructure has broad geographic coverage, with more than 60 highly performant and capable edge nodes planned. These are connected to Lumen’s high-capacity global fiber network, designed to reduce latency to 5 milliseconds or less and deliver real-time capabilities. These nodes will provide all the performance needed to support data-driven applications and workloads. They feature 3rd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors and other highly performant infrastructure components from Intel to deliver the reliability, scalability and overall performance necessary for digital government. For more information, please go to Lumen.com/edge or call 1-888-597-2455.