Whenever I hear about a serious train accident, mugging or shootout on the streets of a city, my thoughts often turn to Fog Computing. The same is true when I too am stuck idling in a traffic jam or at home and there’s a power outage during a winter storm or a summer heat wave.
Why do I think about Fog Computing? Well, my job at Cisco is to not only identify the latest disruptive Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, but also to validate where they might be applied to improve overall quality of life.. Whether it’s drones, artificial intelligence or robotics, my passion is to accelerate the art of the possible.
Consider Fog Computing. Fog extends cloud computing to the edge of the network. This provides a virtualized platform for compute, storage and network services between devices and data storage centers in the cloud. Because of its low latency, location awareness, real-time interactions and wide geo distribution, Fog Computing can sense and respond to situations in the real physical world almost instantly.
The speed and power of Fog to connect people, data, processes and things opens up a new world of practical solutions. For example, Fog Computing, when combined with sensors and wireless networks, can immediately alert the train operator as soon as there is trouble on the tracks, such as a slow-walking pedestrian or a stalled vehicle. With Fog, energy loads can be automatically re-balanced or re-routed to alternative sources during spikes in demand or low availability.
In a Smart+Connected Community, acoustic sensors deployed around streets that are connected to Fog Computing infrastructure can identify gunshots, perpetrators, victims, accidents, or even cries for help with high accuracy while also alerting appropriate authorities.
#CiscoChampion Radio is a podcast series by 
