Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2023. Read them in this 15th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Five trends that will shape the edge computing market in 2023
By Tom Flink, CEO, Sunlight
We
have entered 2023 with the threat of a recession and significant layoffs across
the tech industry. Meanwhile, IT organizations are expected to continue their
pace of innovation with the same or fewer resources and show substantial ROI
for their investments. Cloud migrations and centralization will continue to be
a priority for many IT organizations. However, Edge computing will grow in
importance as AI applications continue to enter the market and organizations
see the benefits of moving computing closer to where data is generated, along
with the opportunity to increase revenues through innovation and new customer
experiences.
In
2023, five trends will shape the edge computing market:
- Consolidation
- Cost initiatives and staff shortages
will cause IT to eliminate complexity, improve manageability, upgrade
infrastructure, automate processes, and rationalize years of
incrementalism across systems and applications. Where previously new
infrastructure and applications were added, as and when needed, enterprises
now have to build flexible, non-brittle infrastructure that adapts to and
scales with the changing needs of the business.
- Artificial
Intelligence (AI) - AI in
2023 will manifest itself in new ways that make it more relevant to
consumers. As it becomes more commonplace, it will open doors for broad
adoption across the enterprise. This will drive the need for edge-specific
computing platforms to support workloads locally, changing many things-
from how we shop to how we create and interact with art, film, and music.
Consumer experiences will be further impacted by developments in
complementary technologies like Computer Vision, Virtual Reality, and
Augmented Reality.
- Edge
Hardware - Compute platforms
at the edge will become as important as the management of the applications
that run on these platforms. The cost of GPU-based edge servers will come
down as supply chain issues ease and the use of GPUs for crypto mining
declines. Servers and storage built for data centers will prove too costly
and inefficient to justify deployment into edge environments.
- Increased
Adoption of Edge Computing -
Obscene amounts of data will be generated from all the IoT sensors and
devices in locations like stores, restaurants, and factories. This will
create the need for processing close to the data source for real-time
insights, action, data sovereignty, and managing costs. In addition,
applications and their underlying platforms will no longer be seen as
separate silos. Edge platforms will manage disparate infrastructure and
applications, including legacy and new workloads running in VMs and/or
containers.
- Winners
and losers - History shows
that there are winners and losers in any economic downturn. Google was
just two years old when the recession hit in 2000. AWS, Spotify, and
Twitter were founded in 2006, shortly before the Great Recession. Whatsapp
was founded in 2009, and Instagram in 2010. Startups have been known to
scale in times of recession and transform our daily lives.
The
winners and losers over the next 18-24 months will define the next era of the
digital revolution - one powered by cost-saving initiatives, AI and edge
computing.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Flink is a veteran of the technology
industry with decades of commercial experience in startups and established
companies working in cloud, cybersecurity, and IT infrastructure. He is the CEO
of Sunlight.io who builds hyper-converged infrastructure and application
management for edge deployments, at scale. Previously, Tom held executive roles
at Citrix Systems, RES Software, Forcepoint, and Instart Logic where he was
responsible for global GTM strategy, sales, and business development.