Frost & Sullivan reckons the market will grow at an “astounding compound annual growth rate of 157.4%” to reach $7.23 billion (€6.12 billion) by 2024, up from $64.1 million in 2019.
Its new report, 5G and Edge Computing – Cloud Workloads Shifting to the Edge, Forecast to 2024, Frost & Sullivan says multi-access edge (MEC) defines edge computing as a “foundational technology for industrial enterprises”.
It is of such importance because MEC offers shorter latencies, robust security, responsive data collection and lower costs.
Solution-agnostic
Frost & Sullivan classes edge as “a solution-agnostic attribute” that can be used across various applications, such as autonomous assets, remote asset monitoring, data extraction from stranded assets, autonomous robotics, autonomous vehicles, and smart factories.
“The recent launch of the 5G technology coupled with MEC brings computing power close to customers and also allows the emergence of new applications and experiences for them,” said Renato Pasquini, Information & Communication Technologies Research Director at Frost & Sullivan.
He adds, “Going forward, 5G and MEC are an opportunity for telecom operators to launch innovative offerings and also enable an ecosystem to flourish in the business-to-business (B2B) segment of telecom service providers using the platform.”
MEC ecosystem winners
In the MEC ecosystem software, that is edge application and solutions, promises the highest compound annual growth rate followed by services, which covers operators’ services, cloud providers’ infrastructure-as-a-service, and edge data centre colocation services.”
Frost & Sullivan predicts that approximately 90% of industrial enterprises will use edge computing by 2022, presenting immense growth prospects for MEC market participants.
It advises:
* Telecom operators to work on solutions and services for connected and autonomous cars.
* System integrators should focus on end-to-end solutions that add significant value for enterprises because 5G requires specific skillsets.
* The combination of 5G and new, specialised, hardware-based mobile edge compute technologies can support streaming media.
* Operators must partner cloud providers and companies with with AI nous and computer vision to design solutions for autonomous cars, drone delivery, and others.
* Companies must capitalise on the chance to develop solutions that exploit 5G and MEC, like augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), for industrial use and gaming.
The really big question is, though, are telcos well placed to cash in – recent research by Omdia and Analysys Mason suggests not.