The Cutting Edge: 8 Trends Future-Minded Solution Providers Should Watch – CRN

If the last two-plus years of creatively supporting unexpected IT use cases in the midst of a global pandemic has taught the industry anything, it’s that the network edge is where the action is.

Businesses are searching for new ways to provide a more responsive end-user experience while preserving network performance. Bringing processing closer to the user through edge computing allows for quicker and more efficient operations, said Mike Pittman, founder and CEO of solution provider Connected Solutions Group (CSG).

Richmond, Va.-based CSG is betting big on all things edge. The company’s mission is to help customers adopt edge processing, Pittman said, because edge computing is becoming increasingly influential in smoothing out the subtle realities of daily operations for many businesses.

“The real power of the edge is when it reaches normalcy in your daily life,” he said. “And we’re just scratching the surface there.”

According to research firm IDC, worldwide spending on edge computing is expected to reach $176 billion in 2022, an increase of 14.8 percent over 2021. Enterprise and service provider spending on hardware, software and services for edge solutions is forecast to sustain this pace of growth through 2025 when spending will reach nearly $274 billion, according to IDC.

It’s safe to say that solution providers shouldn’t sleep on these emerging edge opportunities.

For starters? Security. High-profile breaches and ransomware attacks have long made the news and have been on solution providers’ radars. But thanks to the intelligent edge, the attack surface just gained a potential plethora of new entry points.

Meanwhile, 5G will play a pivotal role in supporting brand-new edge and IoT use cases, such as autonomous vehicles, factory automation, remote health care and patient monitoring, and smart buildings and stadiums, according to IDC. Solution providers say that the link between 5G and edge computing can be boiled down to latency. The fifth-generation global wireless technology promises to fuel innovation at the edge by enabling more data collection and faster processing than ever before.

“That’s what everybody’s looking for as we head toward this 5G revolution. Edge is going to help bring the performance of 5G to the masses,” Pittman said.

Still in its infancy, the edge computing market is being impacted by a number of factors, including growth in IoT, distributed storage, AI, private networking and hybrid work, to name a few. Here are eight trends that will create edge opportunities for the channel in 2023.