Are telcos committed enough to Edge?

One of the current trends in cloud computing is the move towards more distributed computing and edge computing in particular. This is being driven, in part, by market and technology trends that have nothing to do with Telecoms; notably, the shift to "lighter weight" cloud compute models such as containers and server-less compute. Telcos are waking up to edge compute because they plan to deploy some to support their (notably 5G) networks and are realizing that much of this investment could be used to support others' edge compute needs. They too have heard that edge is the next big thing in Cloud, which they missed out on last time around.

When industry thinks about "Edge Cloud" or "Edge Compute" it is generally thinking of on-premise deployments of edge servers. According to GE, "Edge servers can be defined as “a computer for running middleware or applications that sits close to the edge of the network, where the digital world meets the real world. Edge servers are put in warehouses, distribution centers and factories, as opposed to corporate headquarters."

Wikipedia defines Edge Computing as “pushing the frontier of computing applications, data, and services away from centralized nodes to the logical extremes of a network. It enables analytics and data gathering to occur at the source of the data. This approach requires leveraging resources that may not be continuously connected to a network such as laptops, smartphones, tablets and sensor.

The main point here is that for many of the Telcos' potential edge compute customers, the edge is NOT on the network because they do not want to depend on the network for time-critical applications. Indeed, much of the edge compute in use today is primarily there due network reliability concerns (e.g. network fail-over).

If Telcos are going to succeed in offering edge compute services to enterprises (rather than selling a commodity service to other cloud providers), they will need to convince these potential customers that current (and future) edge requirements can reliability be served ON the network edge. The best place to start is by showing them that Telcos understand the opportunity, are committed to it and start working with customers to co-create solutions and commercialisation platforms ahead of 5G deployment. They need to present a more united front with other operators.

Yet, with a few notable exceptions, most operators are skeptical, claiming that there is no business case for network edge compute as a service to others... and definitely not working with their traditional competitors. But messing-up the edge opportunity could mean more than just "missing-out" on yet another opportunity. This is because 5G and telco edge compute success are inter-dependent. The telcos that grasp this and act accordingly will be the ones to watch.