With the increasing number of network edge devices, on the basis of cloud computing, fully tapping the potential of edge computing has become a top priority. According to IDC's latest Global Edge Computing Spending Report, global spending on edge computing is expected to reach $176 billion by 2022, an increase of 14.8% over 2021.
In the mainland, the three major operators have taken the integration of cloud and network as an important strategy, and edge computing is a key part of the integrated layout of cloud and network, and fighting the edge war has become an important direction for digital transformation and taking the road of intelligent pipeline.
The edge computing market has great potential
The so-called edge computing, is decentralized or distributed cloud computing, we can see edge computing as a synergy and supplement to cloud computing, that is, close to the edge of the network or data source, to provide computing and storage resources. In this regard, some people use the octopus as a figurative analogy, cloud computing is equivalent to the octopus brain, edge computing is equivalent to the octopus's small paws, a paw is a small computer room.
The benefits of this are obvious, and processing at the edge can effectively reduce latency, improve data processing and transmission efficiency, and meet the key needs of industry digitalization in agile connectivity, real-time business, data optimization, application intelligence, such as navigation, safety and medical surveillance, autonomous vehicles and video conferencing.
The Prospective Industry Research Institute initially expects the scale of the marginal market to reach 29.6 billion yuan in 2021, an increase of 64.4% over the previous year. IDC expects global spending on edge computing to reach $176 billion by 2022. In the forecast for the next five years, China's spending growth is the fastest, with a compound annual growth rate of 19.7%.
McKinsey & Company predicts that by 2025, the economic value generated by use cases involving only Internet of Things (IoT) applications will be between $3.9 trillion and $11.1 trillion per year. And all the other use cases on edge platforms and the potential positive economic impact will become enormous.
Operators are actively laying out 5G edge computing
Operators are actively laying out 5G edge computing (MEC), as an important part of China Telecom's "2+4+31+X+O" cloud-network integration layout, has established lightweight edge nodes in more than 400 prefectures and cities, unified control of all nodes, application on-demand deployment, with 3,000 edge computer rooms as cloud-side computer rooms, MEC platform to achieve more than ten provinces and cities landing. At last year's Tianyi Intelligent Ecology Expo, China Telecom released the Tianyi Cloud 4.0 distributed cloud, and the edge cloud of Tianyi Cloud 4.0 can be deployed to the client rooms of parks, factories, governments at all levels and other units, and can also be deployed to the regional computer room of China Telecom.
China Mobile released the MEC white paper in 2017, promoting the OpenUPF plan to create an open, customized, manageable and controllable "edge network device" system with edge collaboration. OpenSigma, a self-developed common platform for edge computing, realizes one-stop cloud resources and application hosting, and as of May 2021, China Mobile's edge computing involves 69 customers, of which 49 have completed edge computing deployments.
China Unicom also formulated the MEC deployment strategy and evolution plan in 2017, independently designed the MEC platform architecture in line with the characteristics of China Unicom in 2018, completed the construction of the edge business platform in 2019, and on April 29, 2020, China Unicom released the first MEC edge cloud scale commercial network, which focused on the industry to showcase the internationally leading MEC edge cloud network and platform capabilities. At present, China Unicom takes 5G MEC as the anchor point, integrates CT's connectivity and IT computing power to provide edge computing services for industry users through network deployment and sinking computing power, and accelerates the integration of 5G MEC edge computing with industry segmentation application scenarios.
In the edge computing technology accumulation, business breakthroughs and model innovation have achieved a world-class leading level.
Operators nugget edge computing advantages are obvious
At present, China's edge computing industry is in the ascendant, in addition to operators, telecom equipment manufacturers, IT manufacturers, third-party application developers are gradually making efforts in the field of edge computing.
Compared with Internet enterprises, operators' rich network pipelines and prefectural and municipal data center resources are an important foundation for realizing edge computing, and the deep combination of edge technology and 5G network performance is also another major advantage for operators.
In fact, operators do not just emerge as network service providers. Taking China Telecom as an example, while promoting network reconstruction and 5G evolution, it is also promoting the development of strategic services such as the Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data, and big video, creating a cloud-network collaboration system of "the network is the foundation, the cloud as the core, the network moves with the cloud, and the cloud-network integration", and operators are expected to take advantage of this from the traditional connection only to provide, expand to provide a higher dimension from connecting to storage to computing, enter the field of value-added services outside the traffic, and realize the collaboration between network and service. Cloud and edge synergy and get the best benefits from investment.
In this regard, how operators integrate resources and find balance with the industrial chain in competition and cooperation will become the key to standing out.