The global market for connected edge computing services will grow to about $7 billion in 2025, representing a seven-fold jump over 2019. The lion’s share – as much as two thirds, or $4.6bn – will go to the likes of Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft’s Azure, alongside other cloud players.
This is the view of analyst firm Mobile Experts, which says the rest of the market for provision of edge-based computing – including telecoms companies, neutral host operators, and enterprises, themselves – will be left to fight over the scraps, even as they play “important roles” in hosting sites and providing connectivity.
By 2025, more than half of ‘edge data centres’ will be on-premises, hosted by an enterprise. Another 20-25 percent will be hosted by telcos or internet service providers, as part of their multi-access edge compute (MEC) infrastructure. But Mobile Experts says the ‘public edge cloud’ will take a more prominent role over a longer decade-period – “so every small business can reap the benefits of automation.”
Mobile Experts makes a noise about the depth and impartiality of its research into the market, claiming the forecasts come on the back of 12 separate reports into businesses cases for edge computing, and cover predictions for service revenue, data centre deployment, and server shipments as well as CPU/GPU core shipments.
It makes clear, as well, it is not in the pay of any one party, and its view is objective about the balance of power between telcos, cloud players, neutral hosts, and enterprises. The findings are published in a new report which profiles business models and ‘vertical’ user markets, including in manufacturing, oil and gas, retail, transportation, and other industrial sectors. The report also profiles the leading protagonists in the edge-cloud space.
Telecoms and internet providers will add value through wholesale aggregation of local compute capacity, and by offering connectivity at various tiers of service, the report says. “Some operators will move up to 5G to gain premium pricing for low-latency or high-reliability connections, while others will be satisfied with local real estate hosting edge cloud data centers,” said Mobile Experts in a statement.
Joe Madden, chief analyst at Mobile Experts, commented: “Enterprise markets are ramping up, and the market will see significant revenue in the automotive, industrial, and retail arenas. Telcos themselves will also become edge computing customers, by using cloud platforms to virtualize their networks.”
