Three things I learned about the future of edge at the Accedian-MobiledgeX Summit

A new technology coalition is emerging rapidly and is eager to impact businesses now

We’ve all felt the impact of coronavirus and the subsequent cancellation of MWC this year. Normally, the event acts as the first opportunity for the telco and tech industries to get together and demo their latest innovations.

Accedian felt it too, because we had big news we wanted to share – a partnership with MobiledgeX to help advance the industry’s move towards edge computing.

Since MWC didn’t happen, Accedian and MobiledgeX hosted a small gathering in New York in early March. We had partners, customers, media and a whole range of technology companies all thinking about edge computing. It’s safe to say the mood was one of excitement and enthusiasm.

Here are three things I learned from the conversations.

1. The ecosystem is everything

When it comes to edge computing and the cloud, it doesn’t make sense to think of a single company, or even a single innovation. The technology will stand or fall on the basis of an entire ecosystem.

At the event, we had executives from Accedian and MobiledgeX, but also from systems integration giant, World Wide Technology (WWT), retail transformation technology firm, Stratacache (and Superlumin), and event detection AI for autonomous transportation experts, Sfara. They’re all bringing different use cases for edge computing to the table and looking to partner with us to jointly deliver the infrastructure and technology to make it happen.

There’s a very clear case for doing this. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft seized the public cloud opportunity and have dictated terms to everyone else since then. Anyone who wants to be at the edge and not be commoditized has to learn how to cooperate in order to combat the cloud giants from claiming this space, too.

2. Do you know where your infrastructure is?

One of the most compelling things about the edge is that it makes hardware relevant again. The narrative of “software eats the world” has run out of steam. The highest network and application speeds need software and hardware working together. But that raises the question for a lot of companies: what infrastructure do we have?

If you’re a telco, that will dictate your model for MEC deployment. But it’s just as relevant for a retailer trying to show customers what they would look like wearing a piece of clothing in a magic mirror in the shop window, or a logistics company that wants to put self-driving semi trucks on the street. I’d expect that CIOs of companies across the globe are now trying to catalogue their infrastructure to decide what can and can’t be done.

3. Every industry needs to think about trust

The edge ecosystem is growing even faster than I would have expected a year ago. MobiledgeX currently has 16 telcos signed up to join the edge revolution and counting, and enterprise tech companies are also jumping on board, recognizing the value of the model they offer.

With a tech stack of this size, all kinds of industries will be able to work with the ecosystem. But there is one important factor needed to tie it together – assurance of trust. We’re bringing together capacity and compute, infrastructure and software and deploying it for millions of consumers. That can only work if everyone feels assured about what they’re going to get.

That’s where Accedian comes in: our technology ensures continuous performance and security visibility, across cross-carrier orchestration and at scale for this federated and highly distributed web of partners and technology. We provide the trust needed to make the new ecosystem function and thrive. Assurance and trust in a MEC deployment has gone from important to absolutely fundamental.

This has been a challenging year for many in the industry as the whole of society grapples with the implications of the coronavirus. We look forward to doing what we can to power the path forward, and, with all the hyper-speed progress that has been made recently, we look forward to seeing how the new edge looks at MWC 2021.

In the meantime, to learn more about the work Accedian and MobiledgeX are doing together, read our new whitepaper, or catch the first episode in the Edge Sessions video series.