Hybrid cloud and multi-cloud are the standard way enterprises use cloud computing, a new survey by Flexera finds.
Some 93 percent of enterprise respondents say they have a multi-cloud strategy; while 87 percent say they have a hybrid cloud strategy. Respondents use an average of 2.2 public clouds and 2.2 private clouds, Flexera says.
Edge computing should have a total addressable market larger than the content delivery business, said Sajid Malhotra, Limelight Networks CFO. At least from Limelight’s perspective, the belief is that edge computing will produce revenue as big as the CDN business does now.
‘I think that the edge TAM is much larger than the CDN TAM,” said Sajid Malhotra, Limelight Networks CFO. But he also expects to face more competitors in edge computing than in the CDN business.
Grandview Research estimates global CDN revenues at about $11 billion annually in 2018, growing to perhaps $23 billion revenue by 2025.
Limelight Networks believes its video customers, already using the firm’s content delivery network, also will want to host their own applications on Limelight’s edge computing network as well.
Limelight has begun beta tests of its EdgeFunctions platform, and expects customers will deploy their own application functions into the EdgeFunctions network.
At least initially, Limelight expects video delivery use cases., said Bob Lento, Limelight Networks CEO.
Attitudes and deployments might well change over time, but in our early stage of movement to edge computing, enterprises and connectivity providers differ in views on where edge computing will happen. Enterprises are much more convinced edge computing will happen on premises or at an enterprise data center. Telcos are more likely to believe edge computing happens at multi-tenant data centers or regional data centers.
That makes sense, considering the real estate advantages enterprises and telcos may believe they possess, as well as the attractive use cases. Enterprises think vertically (my business in my industry). Telcos think horizontally (services we sell to everyone).
So “multi-tenant” is not crucial for enterprises, but makes more sense to a telco. But neither group tends to believe edge computing will often happen at street cabinets, aggregation points within the network or cell sites.
At this point, almost everyone believes edge computing is important. A Heavy Reading survey found 80 percent of respondents believe edge computing is important for their business. But the reasons vary.
For telecom operators, the top use cases and business drivers for edge computing are 5G, Internet of Things (IoT), ultra-reliable/ultra-low latency use cases, and high-performance content delivery, the Heavy Reading survey suggests.
For enterprises surveyed, the top use cases and business drivers are artificial intelligence applications, ultra-reliable/ultra-low latency use cases, and IoT.
Enterprises overwhelmingly link edge computing with AI use cases, whereas telecom operators place AI nearly at the bottom of their edge drivers list.
When asked which applications are most likely to drive their initial edge deployments, both telecom operators and enterprises agreed on industrial or factory automation as the biggest initial application.
With the caveat that we always can be wrong, telecom executives polled by the IBM Institute for Business Value believe edge computing will have some clear key advantages. Fully 69 percent believe edge computing--as a tool they will use themselves--will slice operating costs.
That illustrates one aspect of edge computing: it will be a key part of service provider virtualization efforts, an internal tool to support more-agile networks that can change more rapidly, on an automated basis, in many cases.
source: IBM Institute for Business Value
That is separate and apart from any other value edge computing might have as a service telcos and connectivity providers help enable for retail customers or wholesale partners.
Information technology seems to be down, as a percentage of revenue. But if one adjusts for quality, spending is up. We can disagree about how to measure quality improvements, but it is hard to argue that the value and quality of IT is higher over time, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis try to do, adjusting for such quality changes.
The bottom line is that value keeps rising, even if the cost of obtaining that value seems not to increase. That’s a good thing, in terms of productivity, if a business issue for technology suppliers, at times.
source: Harvard Business Review
source: Harvard Business Review
The deployed global power footprint of the edge IT and data center facilities is forecast to reach 102,000 megawatts by 2028, with 68 percent of the deployments being on the infrastructure edge and the remaining 32 percent on the device edge.
source: State of the Edge report
The by now classic need for edge computing is latency performance for applications and use cases operating at machine speed, not human speed, at huge scale, on a highly-automated basis and involving a mix of media including compute-intensive virtual and augmented reality.
A drone flying at 60 miles-per-hour travels 100 yards in four seconds. Avoiding collisions may require decision-support from an edge server and a delay of 100 milliseconds could cause it to crash into something 10 feet away, for example.
source: State of the Edge report
One might say the rise of edge computing is a deepening of the content delivery network widely used to speed up application performance.
Of course, there are “many edges,” and one particular form is of interest to connectivity providers. Computing done directly on devices, by enterprises on their own platforms, on premises, or locally by third parties are not directly business opportunities for most connectivity providers, except as use of those devices requires wide area network and local access connectivity.
The infrastructure edge, on the other hand, might directly involve the connectivity provider as a supplier of facilities, full applications or required WAN access services, thus creating a direct new value proposition, role and revenue source.
Potential roles include supplying real estate (rack space, power, security, air conditioning), private network access or actual applications and computing services.
A Deloitte survey of more than 500 IT leaders and executives reveals that security and data protection is the top driver. With 58 percent of respondents ranking it No. 1 or 2, security is top-of-mind for everyone, from C-suite IT executives and senior leaders to IT managers and developers.
The number-two driver for cloud migration, data modernization, primarily involves moving data from legacy to modern databases.
For consumers, the value of cloud computing is that it is the way nearly all mobile applications are delivered and consumed, and underpins most applications for communications, productivity, information, learning, search, social media and entertainment.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, International Data Corporation had forecast European artificial intelligence (AI) spending of $10 billion for 2020, and compound annual growth at a 33 percent rate through 2023. With the COVID-19 outbreak, IDC expects even-stronger cloud AI solutions growth, even if information technology dips overall.
Global cloud spending is likely to keep growing, as well.
Overall IT infrastructure spending is expected to decline 2.9 percent to $130.6 billion in 2020, IDC predicts.
IDC's forecast for 2020, after taking into consideration the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic and its ensuing economic crisis, is for $69.2 billion in cloud IT infrastructure spending*, a 3.6% predicted annual increase over 2019.
Non-cloud IT infrastructure spending is expected to decline 9.2 percent to $61.4 billion in 2020.
At home use of broadband has leaped 105 percent during work hours, Plume reports. That corresponds to a roughly similar increase in people working from home during normal business hours.
One can see that in the dramatic rise in home use of computers connected to the internet on weekdays from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m., with no similar life on weekends or in the evenings.
The big increase in at-home usage happened after national calls for sheltering in place.
In keeping with the different ways edge computing can happen--on the device, on the premises or at a remote location, Microsoft’s platforms come in three versions, to support private enterprise edge, carrier edge or Microsoft Azure itself.
Microsoft describes Azure Edge Zones as local extensions of Azure, available through Azure with select carriers and operators, or as private customer zones through the Azure Private Edge Zones.
In some cases, Azure Edge Zones are small footprint extensions of Azure placed in population centers that are far away from Azure regions. These are essentially remote Azure nodes.
Azure Edge Zones “With Carrier” are small footprint extensions of Azure placed in mobile operators' data centers in population centers. Azure Edge Zones with carrier infrastructure are placed one hop away from the mobile operator's 5G network, offering sub-10 millisecond latency to applications from mobile devices, Microsoft says.
Azure Private Edge Zones are small footprint extensions of Azure placed on-premises.
By design, the 5G network has been created to support sensors, servers and other data devices requiring low latency, high bandwidth. One example is the 5G network, in some configurations, being able to support data speeds in excess of 20 Gbps and supporting more than a million devices per square kilometer.
Such speeds are overkill for many sensor applications or consumer end user devices, but device density is relevant if one assumes millions of such devices could be used in relatively small areas. Lower-bandwidth use cases plausibly can use 4G or special-purpose networks.
Beyond supplying connections in many use cases where a mobile or wireless wide area network is required, 5G is intimately bound up with edge computing and the internet of things. Potentially providing a platform for new roles and value supplied by connectivity providers.
Autonomous vehicles, drones, or remote patient monitoring often are cited as use cases where 5G is necessary or advantageous. But edge computing still is “computing.” So the issue, as has been the case in prior decades, is whether connectivity providers can create enough value that they are valued participants in roles beyond connectivity.
The jury is still out on that score. Some early initiatives suggest connectivity providers might participate in real estate functions such as providing rack space, power and security at edge locations. Additional roles are conceivable, but so far at least, most of the incremental revenue gain seems to focus on connectivity.
