It sometimes makes sense to treat edge computing not as a generic category but as two distinct types of architectures: cloud edge and device edge.

Most people talk about edge computing as a singular type of architecture. But in some respects, it makes sense to think of edge computing as two fundamentally distinct types of architectures: Device edge and cloud edge.

Although a device edge and a cloud edge operate in similar ways from an architectural perspective, they cater to different types of use cases, and they pose different challenges.

Here’s a breakdown of how device edge and cloud edge compare.

Edge computing, defined

First, let’s briefly define edge computing itself.

Edge computing is any type of architecture in which workloads are hosted closer to the “edge” of the network — which typically means closer to end-users — than they would be in conventional architectures that centralize processing and data storage inside large data centers.

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