In May 2021, Michael Dell took the stage at Dell Technologies World proclaiming that “75% of data will be processed at the edge outside the traditional data center”. In that same presentation, Dell estimated that “over $700 billion in capex will be spent within the decade on edge infrastructure”. Also, companies like Fortinet have proclaimed that the “Edge will eat the Cloud”, VMware brought to market its solution known as the Edge Compute Stack and IBM has cited that edge computing is “the key to digital transformations”. And, at Dell Technologies World 2023, Dell released the NativeEdge, Dell’s entry into the growing Edge Ecosystem. The edge market has been expanding – and quickly.
Which makes sense, if you take a moment to step back and understand why. As it says in the title, the edge is literally everywhere…and there is currently an explosion of data occurring at the edge, resulting from more connected devices, machines, sensors and applications.
But it is also tricky to address the unique needs and requirements of edge computing. In order for enterprises to make effective, real-time operational decisions, they must have a secure, cost-efficient way to derive value from this data – and the only way to derive value from this data is by analyzing and processing it at the edge.
Therefore, organizations must extend their cloud experience to the edge. And in order to do so, they must have a way to centrally manage and orchestrate their edge infrastructure and applications. This is not easy, given that the edge has very specific requirements and challenges, such as scale, security and hardware diversity.
As the market continues to develop, it is certain that collaboration, competition, and partnerships will emerge. Various vendors will adopt different strategies: some will concentrate on specific markets, others will introduce their own proprietary solutions, while some may choose an open approach. Additionally, certain vendors may opt for a more standardized approach and form partnerships with specialized providers in verticals like manufacturing, automotive, retail, healthcare and energy.
ZEDEDA has pioneered inroads into many of these markets based on our edge management and orchestration solution for scale, security and flexibility, and aligned with the Linux Foundation on a standardized OS.
As a result, we have seen some of our customers, like Rockwell and Emerson, enhance their edge computing operations. So, it makes sense to us that the edge computing market keeps attracting new players.
