Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2022. Read them in this 14th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Get Pumped Up for the Future of Edge
By Walt Noffsinger, Vice President of Product,
Section
Both Gartner and Forrester predicted that 2021
was going to be the year edge computing would hit its stride - and they weren't
necessarily wrong about that. While 2021 did see strong, rapid growth on the
digital front, I would argue that the view from here and now makes it clear
that this past year was really, only just the warm-up.
What I wouldn't - or rather, can't - argue
with, however, are the forecasts presented in Gartner's more recent 2022 CIO and Technology Executive Survey.
The report features data gleaned from thousands of CIO and technology executive
respondents in 85 countries across the globe, representing approximately $9
trillion in revenue/public-sector budgets and $198 billion in IT spending.
According to its findings, IT budgets are expected to grow at their fastest
rate in more than a decade, driven largely by the deployment of emerging
technologies. And nowhere is that more true than edge computing.
As companies move to adapt to changing
customer expectations and demands, 2022 is shaping up to be an even bigger year
for the edge. There's a lot to be pumped up about going forward. Here are four
of my predictions about how edge computing is going to pick up the pace in
months ahead:
Prediction
#1: The rise of telcos - With the continued rollout of 5G
infrastructure and the supporting open networking approach, telcos are finding
themselves in a unique position. At worst they'll augment the cloud revolution,
but at best they can even challenge the incumbent cloud providers for a share
of the massive (and expanding) application hosting market. Telcos will start to
develop more mature approaches to application hosting and leverage their unique
differentiation of massively distributed networks to deliver hosting options at
the edge. In addition, more partnerships will emerge to facilitate the
connection between developers and telcos' 5G and edge infrastructure to solve
for their lack of expertise in this space.
Prediction
#2: CDN attempts to reinvent themselves will gain pace - CDNs are recognizing the
need to diversify away from the steadily declining margins of large object
(e.g., video and download) delivery. In addition to reinventing themselves as
application security platforms, CDNs will continue to lean into the application
hosting market. Cloudflare and Fastly have built on their existing
infrastructure to deliver distributed serverless, and we expect other CDNs will
enter and/or expand offerings focused on the application hosting market as they
seek to capitalize on their distributed networks.
Prediction
#3: Use of containers at the edge will continue to grow - Last
year, Gartner predicted that
by 2022 more than 75% of global organizations will be running containerized
applications in production, up from less than 30% in mid-2020. The use of
containers at the Edge will require more advanced support from edge platform
providers to help ease deployment and ongoing operations.
Prediction
#4: Kubernetes will develop a greater position of dominance - Hosting
and edge platforms built to support Kubernetes will have a competitive
advantage in being able to flexibly support modern DevOps teams' requirements.
Edge platform providers who can ease integration with Kubernetes-aware
environments will attract attention from the growing cloud-native community.
For example, leveraging Helm charts-as-a service (the emerging standard in
application development language), where application builders can hand over
their application manifest and rely on an intelligent edge orchestration system
that just works.
With organizations putting even more
investment and innovation muscle into the push to get their applications as
close to where customers and data reside as possible, 2022 is building up to be
another strong (more likely, stronger) year for the edge.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Walt Noffsinger is Section's Vice
President of Product, serving as a key driver and advisor in building out the
company's innovative edge technologies. Walt's background spans more than 30
years of large-scale business transformation in senior leadership roles across
acclaimed public and private sector organizations. His experience in the
product management, development, design and marketing disciplines provide
valuable insights to help drive Section's growth. Walt earned a Bachelor of
Science in Business Administration and Management from Northern Illinois
University and a Master of Business Administration from DePaul University's
Charles H. Kellstadt Graduate School of Business.