IDC: BI Is the Biggest Edge Opportunity
- By CDOTrends editors
- January 25, 2022
As edge IT services continue to develop and expand, knowing which workloads have a significant impact becomes critical in optimizing use case development and edge platforms, according to research house IDC.
A recent IDC report, Enterprise Edge Workloads, offered an analysis of how enterprise workloads were interacting with and supporting edge use cases. It showed how organizations optimize workloads at edge locations and support innovative use cases.
IDC has identified four workloads from its Worldwide Enterprise Infrastructure Workloads Taxonomy that significantly influence edge use cases: business intelligence/data analytics; content delivery; text and image analytics; and networking & security. Multiple workloads are combined to support specific edge use cases.
Because workloads can reside across a continuum of core, edge, and endpoint locations, edge computing requires a significant amount of coordination among technology and service providers. Similarly, workloads run across a range of compute architectures, requiring a high degree of interoperability and scalability.
Accordingly, a symbiotic edge and core to workload relationship is needed to enable workloads based at the core that support the edge, workloads based at the edge that support the edge, and workloads at the edge that support the core.
According to IDC, the most significant edge workload opportunity is streamlining business intelligence and analytics. Because data management and analysis-related workloads have and are expected to have a major or secondary role in nearly all significant edge use case development, IDC expects it will be one of the primary areas of investment at the edge.
Similarly, development tools and applications workloads will see growing investment because they influenced more forward edge use cases, especially in advanced AI and robotics systems. In contrast, IDC doesn't see business application workloads as critical to developing any major enterprise edge use cases.
"Using digital technologies to improve the safety of people and communities and to increase the resilience of operations are being adopted the most rapidly. Industries such as manufacturing are already recognizing the impact that edge resources are having on operational efficiency and improved product quality," said Jennifer Cooke, research director for edge strategies at IDC.
"As these platforms become more readily customized and adapted for broader use, the need for more IT infrastructure at the edge will escalate."
IDC has forecast that global spending expected on edge computing in 2022 will grow by 14.8% year on year to USD176 billion and reach USD274 billion in 2025.
The U.S. will lead in investment with forecast spending of USD76.5 billion in 2022, followed by Western Europe with USD30.6 billion and China, USD20.8 billion.
IDC’s edge forecasts comprise spending by companies and service providers on hardware, software, and services for edge computing solutions.
Image credit: iStockphoto/NicoElNino