“From Cloud to Edge” Research predicts the rise of Edge Computing and unveils the main trends in the Cloud Computing Market

February 2nd, 2021

By 2025 Cloud Computing will lead the ICT infrastructure market and Edge Computing will become an exponentially growing market, according to Reply’s new research "From Cloud to Edge", made possible by Reply’s Trend SONAR proprietary data-driven platform and the support of Teknowlogy Group.

The research explores the use of both Cloud Computing and Edge Computing technologies in “Europe-5” (Italy, Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium), and “Big-5” (USA, United Kingdom, Brazil, China, India) clusters in order to understand the evolution of the market.

In the next 5 five years Edge Computing will be an exponentially growing market in all “Europe-5” and “Big-5” clusters’ countries. Germany will be the biggest European market for both Cloud Computing and Edge Computing; the USA will be the dominant market worldwide.

The growing usage of IoT solutions, the closer combination of Information Technology and Operational Technology and the integration of Industrial Control Systems in the IT stack, as well as future 5G campus solutions for low-latency applications, are accelerating the need for edge solutions.

In fact, Edge Computing can support companies with computing tasks that cannot be done in the cloud and offers clear advantages when dealing with low latency, connectivity, security or privacy and transmitted data volumes are an issue.

Edge and distributed cloud architectures will increase the speed of data processing and reduce time lag. Edge computing, alone or in combination with Cloud Computing, will play a key role to enable technologies like autonomous vehicles, digital factories, smart cities, digital health, smart tracking and much more.

Hybrid models like Edge Cloud will be pushed by the hyperscalers and the wide 5G rollout will give Telcos and their service partners a relevant role in the new ecosystem, especially thanks to mobile-edge computing which is able to ensure very low latency without local infrastructure, with compute units not on-premise but extremely close from to a cell tower.

“Edge computing is here to stay. It is already starting to reshape enterprise computing and it can play a vital role in IT architectures. All the industries that need to perform the computing tasks as close to where data is gathered as possible will benefit from Edge Computing. At Reply, we’re already supporting global enterprises to design and implement architectures that leverage the best of Edge and Cloud Computing, while ensuring privacy and cybersecurity” commented Filippo Rizzante, CTO Reply.

In addition, the research indicates that Cloud Computing became the most popular ICT focus during Coronavirus peaks. COVID-19 has intensified the global spread of Cloud Computing technologies after 15 years of steady growth: across the world, millions of users started to use cloud-based platforms to collaborate, shop online, and for entertainment purposes.

Cloud technologies are key to being able to react and restart activities. By 2021 in both “Europe-5” and “Big-5” clusters the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)/Platform as a Service (PaaS) market will grow - in all scenarios - between 50% and 55% (vs. 2019).

The Software as a Service (SaaS) market is also set to grow rapidly in every country analysed. In particular, by 2025 it is predicted to double in the USA, UK and all “Europe-5” cluster countries, while likely to quadruple in India and China.

For more insights download the full research: “From Cloud to Edge”.