Hedging GDPR with Edge Computing

Cloud has drastically changed the way companies deal with data as well as compute resource. It is no more constraint by tedious and long procurement process and offers unparalleled flexibility. The next wave of change is currently taking shape. A combination of serverless solution offering ever more flexibility coupled with more significant financial control and at at the edge, where the amount of data, the complexity of applications are driving requirements for local options. 

IoT and AR/VR are the two obvious applications driving enterprise to the edge because of their use of complicated and expensive solution coupled with humongous performance requirement such as extra low latency with no jitters.

However other reasons behind edge computing start to emerge and will probably attract more traditional enterprise because of the advantage conferred by the ultra localisation of data and compute solutions. 

GDPR has the potential to accelerate edge computing adoption. Edge Computing can offer hyper localisation of data storage as well as processing. These features ticks many boxes of the regulatory requirements. With the boom in personal data being generated via the ever-increasing number of consumer devices, like smart watches, smart cars and homes, there are the ever-looming potentials, for a company, to expose themselves to GDPR infractions. Not to mention data ownership, and responsibility can also be a tricky question to answer, for example, who is responsible for the data – the consumer, the watch provider or the vendor?

One of the solutions delivered by edge computing would be to store and process data onsite within the local premise or a delimited geographical perimeter. It would not only offers greater access and guaranteed control. But also enable hyper localisation and regulatory compliance. 

Hence, there is a significant potential market for future Edge computing provider to offer robust regulatory and compliance solution. Look at gaming servers and underage data protection, HR or healthcare information. There is a vast trove of customers that will now see a way of leveraging cloud-like models while maintaining tight geographical and regulatory constraints. One potential would be to offer a form of reverse take over, or merger: Edge computing providers would be invited to leverage existing on-premise infrastructure and turn them into cloud-like serverless solution with strong compliance out of the box. It will allow companies to benefit at low cost from cloud-like flexibility while offering robust regulatory compliance via explicitly exposing and constraining storage and compute operations to specific locations.

Last but not least edge computing providers will be able to facilitate access to local data or processing capability on demand to third parties while having the capability to enforce robust compliance. Opening an entirely new market for market compliant brokerage. By example, customers can allow access to data or extract metadata from the vendor back to the watch provider or its own medical insurance company.  All these interactions being mediated (and charged) by the edge computing provider. 

By becoming the custodian of data at the edge, Edge computing provider can build a two-sided market. Serving data generator, customers, individuals, organisations, aka data issuers and issuer processor one side. Also, on the other side, merchants,  advertisement companies, insurance, etc... aka acquirers and acquirers processor.  Edge computing provider would facilitate the transactions between issuer and acquirer while enabling hyper-local and compliant solutions. A little bit like visa but for data and compute.