The COVID-19 pandemic[1] produced few net-new technology and business developments, but it certainly accelerated many technology trends already in motion. Edge computing is one of the most notable among these accelerated technologies. Every type of technology vendor — hardware, software, and cloud — has jumped on the edge bandwagon, crowding the market and confusing buyers.
The coming year will prove to be the real inflection for edge computing. Practical applications are finally emerging where this architecture can bring real benefits.
Forrester predicts the following key developments in edge computing that will illustrate this inflection point in 2021:
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Data center marketplaces will emerge as a new edge hosting option. When people talk about the location of "the edge," their descriptions vary widely. Regardless of your own definition, edge computing technology needs to sit as close to "the action" as possible. It may be a factory floor, a hospital room, or a North Sea oil rig. In some cases, it can be in a data center off premises but still as close to the action as makes sense. This rules out many of the big data centers run by cloud providers or co-location services that are close to major population centers. If your enterprise is highly distributed, those centers are too far. We see a promising new option emerging that unites smaller, more local data centers in a cooperative marketplace model. New data center aggregators such as Edgevana and Inflect allow you to think globally and act locally, expanding your geographic technology footprint. They don't necessarily replace public cloud, content delivery networks, or traditional co-location services — in fact, they will likely enhance these services. These marketplaces are nascent in 2020 but will become a viable model for edge computing in 2021.
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Private 5G will push enterprises