Business futures will be powered by the intelligent edge

The cloud is ubiquitous. Over the past decade it has evolved significantly and has transformed all our lives. We store our photos in the cloud, stream our TV and music from the cloud, and, have been meeting our friends and families virtually via the cloud.

In business and society, cloud technology has evolved so rapidly that it is impossible to conceive of enterprises or governments operating effectively without it. The cloud is the backbone on which today’s most important advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and internet of things (IoT) come to life, and it is driving innovation, new business models and ecosystems at speed and scale. And more exciting times are ahead.

It is therefore of great significance for Deloitte when we receive industry accolades for our cloud offerings; most recently, being named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud IT Transformation Services, Worldwide, 2021. In addition to such acknowledgements of our work, I am always excited when our clients tell us about the transformational changes to their business that we helped envision and deliver using the cloud.

Even more exciting is to contemplate what’s next. The advent of 5G and—a little further over the horizon—quantum computing, is going to accelerate the cloud’s capabilities to levels even more powerful than we have seen in the past decade.

The massive bandwidth expansion with 5G will accelerate the evolution of the cloud which, along with AI and ML, will power the ‘intelligent edge’. With billions of ‘edge devices’ coming on stream, such as sensors, drones, cameras, and myriad other IoT contact points that gather data on industrial processes, supply chains, and consumer behavior, there’s a growing demand to be able to process that data quickly and efficiently in real time. The intelligent edge will address today’s challenges on latency and bandwidth by providing compute and storage proximate to these edge devices, and bring new possibilities to life with AI and ML by delivering ambient intelligence—advanced analytics and enhanced experiences in a real-time and secure way.

. . . the cloud will open up dramatic new possibilities for data analysis at the edge . . .

Enhanced by 5G, and infused with AI and ML software, the cloud will open up dramatic new possibilities for data analysis at the edge, providing organizations with faster insights and greater decision-making power than ever before. Imagine being able to predict and prevent even the tiniest component failure on a production line, automatically increase production of a line of goods based on a predicted increase in consumer demand that may be months away, or deliver targeted, real time personalization with streaming video to aid shopping decisions.

All this is starting to happen even today as the hyperscalers rapidly enhance their edge offerings in many areas, including AWS Wavelength, Azure EdgeZones and Google Cloud Anthos. And there will be new kinds of partnerships between hyperscalers and telcos as new ecosystems are spawned.

Research and advances in hardware with special purpose chips, neural engines and quantum computing will continue to move things at warp speed, creating new possibilities.

So yes, the next decade and beyond will see game-changing advances in what the cloud can enable. What should leaders therefore be doing to prepare their organizations?

First, standing still is not an option, and a bias to act is imperative. Embrace the edge, imagine the possibilities, be agile and fail fast. Get the right team—one unified team across IT and business—choose the right partners, and lead and evangelize change. Prioritize and pick your spots on where to drive the highest impact, execute hard and communicate successes. Iterate and evolve to address new market needs and take advantage of new capabilities, while retaining the solutions that work best and constantly adapting to keep yourself competitive.

The next decade is going to be super exciting and a lot of fun.