Should data be crunched at the centre or at the edge?

ONCE A YEAR the computing cloud touches down in Las Vegas. In early December tens of thousands of mostly male geeks descend on America’s gambling capital in hope not of winnings but of wisdom about Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world’s biggest cloud-computing provider. Last year they had the choice of more than 2,500 different sessions over a week at the shindig, which was called “Re:Invent”. The high point was the keynote featuring AWS’s latest offerings by Andy Jassy, the firm’s indefatigable boss, who paced the stage for nearly three hours.