Unlocking the Edge Opportunity for Channel Organizations

Rob Darby

Over the last decade, we’ve seen a significant shift in the way we consume services and do business. Users expect rapid performance from digital products, whether they’re using web and cloud applications, streaming content, gaming online or using business-critical services.

At the same time, 5G adoption is increasing and driving growth in more complex and mission-critical Internet of Things (IoT) solutions, resulting in a growing number of devices, applications and volume of data. To be successful in this environment, organisations need faster access to data and seamless, high-speed connectivity, regardless of location, making latency and the flow of data increasingly critical.

Getting Started with Edge Computing

An increasing number of businesses and service providers are turning to edge computing as the answer, adopting decentralised strategies which enable data, applications and content to be processed and managed at the network edge. And with the worldwide edge computing market predicted to grow to $250.6 billion by 2024, resellers must act quickly to capitalise on the opportunity. But where should you start?

Recognise the opportunity. While edge computing isn’t yet a mainstream technology, it’s highly likely we’ll see mass adoption of edge networking in the future. Enterprises have already embraced mobile and hybrid working models because of the pandemic and will need points of presence in regional data centres that are closer to their users to ensure they have fast, low latency connections wherever they’re located.

Take steps to identify the edge opportunity for your business. This means reviewing your current service portfolio and identifying any gaps that need to be filled to meet changing customer requirements. It also means identifying the sectors and use cases that are likely to be early adopters of edge computing, such as health care and manufacturing, which process a high-level of dispersed data.

Develop a common understanding. Before your organisation can capitalise on the edge opportunity, you need to first understand the technology. Just like the rise of cloud and managed services 10 years ago, edge computing is still a fairly new technology and can mean different things to different people. Some resellers may see edge purely as the end devices on a network, while others may think it’s the endpoint devices on a network. However, it is the edge of public cloud that links to end-user devices.

Make sure you take the time to upskill your workforce to develop a common understanding of what edge computing is. If internal expertise doesn’t exist to do so, identify a partner that can provide the support and training required.

Look beyond public cloud. As cloud adoption has continued to rise, many resellers have focused their portfolio purely on public cloud. However, as data volumes continue to grow, the demand for hybrid and multicloud strategies will increase as businesses look to reduce the costs of storing everything in public cloud.

Revisit your strategy and identify how you can diversify your offering to deliver end-to-end cloud solutions. Consider connecting to an established and scalable national network of data centres and cloud platforms to deliver immediate market impact and revenue growth.

Build an edge network. Developing an edge offering requires connection to the UK’s digital edge. As network traffic increases across a wider spread of geographical locations, data traveling back to one centralised data centre will become congested. An edge networking approach that spreads the load across three or four regional edge data centres will mean data can be …