Kathy Gibson reports – Edge computing is no longer a future vision, but a reality for organisations looking to drive business outcomes.
This focus on business advantage is important to the success of edge implementation, says Lauren Wortmann, vice-president: applications and cloud for southern Africa at Dimension Data, presenting NTT’s Edge Advantage report.
The study shows that almost 80% of the companies survey are leveraging edge to solve critical business challenges – and for more than 80% of them, their edge investments are meeting and frequently exceeding expectations.
Every organisation polled reiterated that their edge investments are directly linked to increasing the use of data insights for decision making, and to improving supply chain efficiency and resilience. Meanwhile, 90% say edge investments are linked to increasing employees’ safety, experience and efficiency.
Most edge projects are currently being run by companies in the manufacturing, healthcare, transportation and logistics, energy and utilities, and financial services sectors.
They are primarily being undertaken mostly to solve problems with operational efficiency, automation and AI, managing the growth of connected devices (IoT), and network segmentation, Wortmann points out.
It’s key to note that edge projects are not being run in isolation, she adds, with 90% of survey respondents saying their security team plays a critical role in the architecture and implementation of edge; and three out of four saying collaboration is required across stakeholder groups.
Indeed, current adopters see the fragmented management of compute, connectivity and IoT devices as a hindrance to realizing the potential of edge. As such, those organisations that are combining private 5G and edge technologies report the highest benefits over enterprises who have adopted a legacy segregated approach, or none at all.
The report also shows that, while though most organisations believe their network infrastructure can handle their current edge requirements, almost 40% of global enterprises planning edge deployments acknowledge a need to upgrade their network in order to support the expected spike in connected devices and applications. In South Africa, nearly two-thirds of enterprises that already deployed edge have co-ordinated a wide area network refresh.
In light of this, many companies are planning to turn to partners to help them on their edge journey. Eighty-six percent of South African businesses believe their organisation’s dependency on third-party edge services will grow in the next 24 months, with 88% expressing a preference to consume edge services from a single partner that offers a central point of accountability and 94% declaring that “having more managed service options” is a top factor in making edge consumption easier.
According to organisations that have already deployed edge, there are significant challenges to achieving their goals because they require tight orchestration of hardware, platforms, systems and devices; consistent operational performance without compromising security; and legacy infrastructure and technical debt to be overcome.
At the end of 2022, NTT announced the launch of its edge-as-a-service offering.