Too Many Intelligent Edges (Premium)

These days, Microsoft is like the Oprah of intelligent edge. That is, virtually any device can be considered part of this nebulous non-platform.

As in, "You're an intelligent edge! YOU'RE an intelligent edge. YOU'RE an intelligent edge too!!" Or whatever. I don't watch Oprah.

Anyway, I've been trying to get excited about Microsoft's intelligent cloud, intelligent edge strategy. And as someone focused on personal technology for almost 25 years now, it should come as no surprise that the "intelligent edge" half of that terrible tagline is the more interesting to me.

But what is an intelligent edge device?

The definition is simple enough. From Microsoft's perspective, an intelligent edge device is any device that has enough smarts to handle AI independently of the cloud. These devices can utilize cloud-based AI, and often/usually will. But they can perform AI on their own. They are the intelligent edge.

After that, things get complicated. Because virtually any smart device, and there are probably more of them than you realize, can be considered the intelligent edge.

At the lowest end of the scale, we have the Azure Sphere microcontroller platform, which encompasses hardware, software, and security services. This Internet of Things (IoT) platform runs on a version of Linux, not Windows, which makes it somewhat unique in the Microsoft ecosystem, at least for now.

But Microsoft has other, "bigger" IoT platforms that do run on Windows, and they are also considered intelligent edge devices. Windows IoT Core, Windows IoT Enterprise, and a new offering called Windows IoT Services---essentially Windows IoT Core with 10 years of support---are all "optimized to power intelligent edge devices," Microsoft says.

But phones, tablets, PCs of all kinds, even Surface Hubs are also intelligent edge devices. And in many ways, they are the most sophisticated. In fact, when most people consider the notion of "on-device AI," if they ever do, they will most likely think of their smartphones, with their built-in assistants. Or perhaps they will think of smart speakers, which, yes, are intelligent edge devices too.

They're all intelligent edge devices, it seems.

Microsoft says that the intelligent edge is a "new frontier of computing.". And that is a surprisingly adept turn of phrase, as it turns out. Like the new frontier of the American West in the 1800's, the intelligent edge is nebulous and undefined. It is full of hope, and promise, and could be anything that its earliest pioneers wish. It is also scary and unknown, and it is full of any number of dead-ends.

And on that note, I'm not clear what the real plan is here. During a recent Computex pre-briefing, Microsoft commingled such unrelated platforms as Azure Sphere, Windows Collaboration Displays, Windows 10 IoT, and PCs from a variety of partners (including gaming PCs) as all being part of the intelligent edge. These things have almost nothing in common with each other (though...

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