By next year, edge deployment of network resources will increase by almost half (40 percent), a new report from IDC and Limelight Networks suggests.
According to the “Outlook for Edge Services” paper, 60 percent of all network resources will be deployed at remote edge or service provider locations by 2022, up from 20 percent today.
Beyond providing greater agility, the report also states that migrating content processing to the edge will allow businesses be able to offer consumers high-quality video at low cost and with minimal buffering.
Further, almost half of the poll’s respondents believe edge will increase their organization’s productivity and efficiency. They also see it as beneficial for security and compliance, and believe it will speed up the decision-making process. And finally, four in ten believe edge can improve customer relations and customer experience.
By 2023, the report concludes, more than half of all new enterprise IT infrastructure deployed will be at the edge, instead of in corporate data centers. For most of the report’s respondents (73 percent), edge is a strategic investment, while the remaining 17 percent see it as a business operations requirement.
“In 2021, we can expect the variety and scope of customization capabilities to grow, helping enterprises meet high end user expectations for accessing and consuming content,” said Steve Miller-Jones, VP of Strategy, Industry & Partnership at Limelight Networks.
“Shipping large quantities of raw data towards cloud providers is expensive and can introduce significant latency. This is why the network edge will be used more for data processing and decision making. It allows access to multiple compute locations close to end users and devices, therefore removing the potential for latency without incurring additional operational overheads. The net result is improved content performance in a cost efficiency way, with built-in security and scale.”
