IoT and Multi-Access Edge Computing

Edge computing seems to have finally taken over the hype mantle from IoT while we all await the super powers of 5G targeting world hunger. On more practical terms, edge computing may actually have legs because of IoT. As enterprises continue to scale up their IoT projects and especially ones that are dealing with a ton of operational technology, they realize that sending all of the data generated at the edge to the cloud may not be the best strategy in the long term. In my conversations with customers , especially retail and healthcare, have shown an interest in exploring MEC for their IoT pilots. Interestingly, a lot of the IT leaders in these verticals are operating under the assumption that technologies like AWS GreenGrass, AWS Sitewise or Azure IoT edge as being a MEC solution. While Greengrass etc. are great examples of edge technologies , MEC is specific to the cellular context and is deployed at the base station level. This will allow enterprises to leverage cellular technologies with the ability to process data at the edge. Most customers are not aware of this nuance since the technology in itself is quite new and we have not seen products/ecosystem emerge around this. There is a great opportunity here for telco partners to create MEC specific vertical products and an incentive for carriers to embrace this via a marketplace concept. There are also lots of lessons to be learnt from openstack and service providers would benefit from taking a model similar to Kubernetes. 

For IoT customers, MEC provides an opportunity to provide immediate insights at the edge ( for ex: a supervisor monitoring industrial machines or retail manager on inventory etc) without having to deploy custom hardware/gateway’s etc. For the IoT partner ecosystem, this opens the door for creating MEC compatible systems and platforms.