How can telcos keep an edge with MEC?

As network technology, operational technology and IT increasingly meet in the cloud, a new ecosystem is developing to provide multi-access edge computing (MEC) to enterprises. Google is the latest to lay out its edge ambitions as the distinction between carrier and enterprise MEC increasingly blurs and multiple actors look to foster ecosystems for the enterprise edge.

Google’s recent Google Distributed Cloud announcement promises a “portfolio of solutions consisting of hardware and software that extend our infrastructure to the edge and into your data centers.” There are four elements to Google’s offer: network edge, operator edge, customer edge and customer data centers. Google’s network edge comprises 140 Google network edge locations worldwide. Its operator edge “enables customers to take advantage of an operator’s edge network and benefit from 5G/LTE services offered by our leading communication service provider (CSP) partners,” according to Google.

The customer edge, meanwhile, supports enterprise-owned edge including retail stores, factory floors, or branch offices, and when it comes to customer-owned data centers, Google will offer data security and privacy solutions. The whole of Google Distributed Cloud will sit on Google’s Anthos platform which “unifies the management of infrastructure and applications across on-premises, edge, and in multiple public clouds.”

Google is far from alone in targeting the enterprise edge. Nokia’s MX Industrial edge solutions, for example, set out to “cut through IoT complexity” and allow “enterprises to swiftly deploy on premise edge applications coming from other ecosystems or ISVs, as well as ‘click and deploy’ mixed reality, automation, data aggregation, localization of assets and video analytics capabilities from the application catalog to the on-premises edge,” according to Nokia.

Nokia will also offer Microsoft Azure IoT Edge Services, and its target customers include digital factories, smart cities, warehouses, and transportation hubs. Google is also aiming at the manufacturing vertical with its Intelligent Products Essentials to allow “manufacturers to rapidly deliver products that adapt to their owners, update features over-the-air using AI at the edge, and provide customer insights using analytics in the cloud.”

CSP’s place on the edge

IDC forecasts that worldwide revenue for the multi-access edge cloud (MEC) will grow from $3.5 billion in 2020 to $16.7 billion in 2025. The forecast covers carrier MEC and looks at virtual network functions, network functions virtualization infrastructure and cloud-native network functions at the carrier edge cloud across mobile edge, wireline edge, cable edge, and the edge of content distribution networks. The big shift in carrier MEC revenue growth will come in around two years’ time, however, driven by the development of boxes that integrate certain carrier MEC and enterprise MEC functions, according to Ajeet Das, Research Director, Telecom Infrastructure, International Data Corporation (IDC).

“When enterprises can buy everything in a box [revenue] growth will ramp up very fast,” according to IDC’s Das.

Currently enterprise MEC typically covers service such as IoT and analytical functions in factories and does not compete with carrier MEC, says Das. But that is set to shift. “In the future the distinction will still be there, but there will be tighter integration,” believes Das, with one box providing multi-access cloud computing to enterprises, including unified management for connection to applications and open APIs where developers can keep uploading things.

Building a community of developers to create new applications as IT, operational technology and network technology are able to converge could prove to be a critical part of new edge offerings. At the same time a MEC will be “a software-based network that can be configured any way enterprises want to consume it and will give enterprises more control over their part of the network,” according to Das. It will create opportunities for CSPs to offer network-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service and edge applications-as-a-service. Das believes new use cases will come to the fore with standalone 5G over the next decade.

“CSPs are in a unique position of strength when it comes to connectivity,” says Das.

Collaborating on standards

TM Forum is working with CSPs to simplify edge computing adoption and has announced a MEC partnership with Bridge Alliance, which brings together 24 operators who serve close to 900 million customers customers in the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. “MEC is an area of growth which many telecom operators are focusing on as our industry moves towards edge computing,” says Dr. Ong Geok Chwee, CEO of Bridge Alliance. “Given the current fragmented regional telecom market, there is a need to work towards integration and interoperability as a common goal.”