The edge opportunity in the enterprise market: progress, challenges and future outlook

The digital transformation of vertical sectors respresents the biggest catalyst for edge, as nearly half of enterprises find edge capabilities compelling for their IoT deployments and wider digital transformation plans. While edge adoption is still a fraction of its long-term potential, the pace of developments is accelerating in pioneer markets such as China, Europe, North America and developed Asia-Pacific. From a competitive perspective, edge computing is already a battleground, with cloud companies, telecoms vendors and operators launching new commercial solutions and partnerships to drive edge momentum, eager to capture a growing share of the nascent market.

Building on our operator and enterprise primary research, our latest report on edge computing analyses industry progress so far, the drivers, challenges and future outlook. Operators are still in the initial stages of edge deployments but they recognise the edge computing opportunity and its connection with the wider strategy of expanding beyond connectivity. However, our research also shows that potential misalignments internally and delayed 5G SA could slow edge deployments, leaving some operators chasing the game.