15 edge computing trends to watch in 2025 and beyond

1. 'Digital readiness' is driving increase in business use of edge computing

Rising demand for computing capability at the edge is being driven by a host of enterprise needs and objectives, according to Titus M, practice director at research firm Everest Group and leader of its cloud and infrastructure services research practice. These include factors that have spurred the use of edge computing over many years, such as cost and bandwidth efficiency, data privacy and security, business continuity and resilience, sustainability and energy efficiency, and vertical-specific use case customization.

"The fundamental change is that now more organizations are digitally ready and have more emphasis at the C-suite level, hence more adoption," M said, adding that organizations which "adopt edge computing gain several benefits, including improved customer experience, operational efficiency and compliance."

2. The designs and capabilities of edge devices are improving

The quality of edge computing devices is also on the upswing, said Brian Alletto, director of cloud technology at digital services firm West Monroe.

He said there is an increased "robustness of construction" as the technology incrementally advances each year. Vendors have made the edge devices more flexible so they can easily be mounted or configured in different ways to fit the use case requirements and the locations in which they're placed. They have more insulation to protect them from the elements in the environments where they operate, such as extreme temperatures and vibrations. Their computing capabilities and power efficiency have gone up too.

Additionally, vendors have introduced better management software platforms and frameworks, Alletto said. This allows organizations to more easily deploy, manage, secure and maintain edge devices; to do so at scale; and to do so "away from the traditional IoT centers of excellence."

All these improvements allow organizations "to deploy edge technologies in ways that are cost effective, durable, reliable and suitable for deployments outside a nicely designed and protected data center," he added.

3. Spending on edge technology will continue to soar

Market value figures vary widely. But there's consensus among multiple research and analyst reports that spending on edge is going up and will continue to climb.

According to the IDC's Worldwide Edge Spending Guide, global spending on edge computing (combined enterprise and service provider spending on hardware, software, professional services, and provisioned services for edge solutions) will reach $228 billion in 2024. That's up 14% from 2023. IDC also estimates that strong growth will continue in the upcoming years, with spending expected to be near $378 billion by 2028.

Nearly all industries have found a business need to put computing at the edge, said Yih-Khai Wong, an analyst at market research company ABI Research. For example, the automotive, healthcare, manufacturing and retail sectors are leading the way with edge deployments.

"These are all industries where we see a lot of noise when it comes to edge computing," Wong said.

4. Edge computing types continue to expand

The number and type of edge computing devices and deployments are expanding.

"Edge is a family of technology that includes hardware, software, data and services and ensuring that those elements are located where they can be optimized. And it's becoming much more strategic and broader in nature," said Michele Pelino, an analyst at Forrester Research and leader of the firm's edge computing and IoT research.

Organizations across industries are deploying purpose-built edge computing devices within their own facilities. But that's only a fraction of the edge compute power out in the world today, Pelino said.

Some companies are creating second- and third-tier data centers to house edge capabilities. For example, such data centers might be housed in a commercial building to process data within that specific facility.

Additionally, organizations use content delivery networks, a collection of geographically distributed yet interconnected servers that cache content locally to speed delivery to end users.

Some organizations are buying edge computing capabilities from telecom service providers, whose widespread infrastructure and expansive reach allow them to put edge devices physically close to nearly all potential customers. The telecom operators use that proximity to offer edge computing equipment, services and supporting components, such as secure access service edge, which bundles and delivers network and security-as-a service functions as a single service.

Even the cloud hyperscalers are offering edge computing options, Alletto said. One example is AWS Local Zones, which AWS said offers "single-digit millisecond latency or local data processing by bringing AWS infrastructure closer to your end users and business centers."

5. Edge growth creates infrastructure 'headwinds'

The distributed nature of edge computing presents challenges, and the effects of those challenges are growing alongside the demand for and deployment of edge hardware.

"There are some headwinds for edge," said David Witkowski, a senior member of professional association IEEE and co-chair of the Deployment Working Group at IEEE Future Networks.

An important concern that companies face is the sustainable management of edge assets across multiple locations and devices.

"The location of the equipment will be on pedestals and roadside vaults, and that creates challenges with powering and cooling them," according to Witkowski, who is also CEO of Oku Solutions, which provides professional support services to the wireless telecommunications industry.

The overall risk of using public spaces to house edge equipment is another concern.

"It creates challenges with the security of the vaults [that house them]," Witkowski said. "These assets are located in public places that could be compromised and even getting space to place them will be challenging for companies deploying this equipment."

While telecom service providers and others building up edge computing capabilities are working through such issues, these challenges could slow down the pace of edge deployments and slow the speed of innovation and the use cases -- such as self-driving vehicles -- that rely on the technology to operate, he said.

There are advancements on this front, however, Alletto said. Improvements in both management software and edge deployment best practices are making it easier for more organizations to remotely watch over their edge devices and often do so with a smaller number of people.

6. More hackers are targeting edge deployments

Threat actors have noted the growing number of IoT and edge computing devices as prime targets.

Researchers have identified numerous potential threats, including the following:

• Attacks against user and endpoint devices.
• Sniffing attacks against the radio access network (RAN).
• Attacks against servers and data at the network edge.
• Sniffing attacks against endpoint (user) devices and components.
• Attacks against associated cloud workloads.
• Attacks against applications at the network edge.
• Supply chain attacks.
• Attacks against the 5G core network.
• Physical attacks against technical components such as IoT devices and abandoned assets.
• DDoS against RAN.
• Attacks against multi-access edge computing.

"We're talking about fragmented connected devices that open up doors to more bad things happening," Pelino said. "Companies need to think about security upfront and very early on."

In fact, enterprise leaders put cybersecurity and data protection risks as the top barrier to faster edge adoption, according to the "2024 State of Edge Computing" report from advisory firm Omdia, part of Informa TechTarget. The report found that 47% of North America survey respondents, 46% of those in APAC and 41% in EMEA cited security and data protection as barriers.

8. Computing on the edge is becoming more powerful

Apple made news in October 2023 when it announced the arrival of its M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chips, the first personal computer chips built using 3-nanometer process technology that packs more transistors into a smaller space for improved speed and efficiency.

9. Edge AI is poised for substantial growth

That higher computing power is allowing AI and machine learning to move from cloud services to the edge, and the ability to support AI with edge computing continues to improve.

"AI-specific edge chips, such as NVIDIA's Jetson series, bring unprecedented compute power to the edge, enabling sophisticated AI inference on smaller, energy-efficient devices," M said. "This opens the door for a wide range of use cases, from AI-driven retail kiosks to predictive maintenance in industrial settings."

The developments in AI-capable edge chips are not only accelerating innovation, M said, but also influencing broader ecosystem trends. Enterprises are rethinking their IT architectures to prioritize hybrid models that blend edge and cloud capabilities, leveraging the strengths of both.

"Additionally, edge-specific AI frameworks and platforms are becoming more prevalent, making it easier for developers to deploy and scale edge AI applications," M said.

10. 5G's growth transforms edge computing's capabilities

Although edge computing helps reduce latency by putting compute resources close to the endpoints generating data, the speed of 5G combined with edge computing further reduces latency to support use cases where near-real-time processing is critical.

Because 5G creates a bigger, faster pipe to carry data, it can deliver the ultra-low latency required for many applications, including the widespread deployment of autonomous vehicles, advanced healthcare services such as remote telesurgery and the metaverse.

As such, many are closely watching the expansion of 5G networks.

According to a February 2024 report from GSMA Intelligence titled "The State of 5G 2024," "the number of 5G connections worldwide surpassed 1.5 billion at the end of 2023, four years after the arrival of the technology, making it the fastest-growing mobile broadband technology to date."

Other reports have reached similar conclusions.

5G is on course to become the fastest growing and most widely adopted wireless cellular technology. It is projected to exceed 4G LTE by over 2.5 billion connections in 2028, according to a September 2023 study by 5G Americas, a wireless industry trade association, working with research firm Omdia.

Moreover, 5G connections are forecasted to reach 8 billion by 2026. This will surpass the first-decade growth of LTE by more than 2.5 billion connections, according to the study.

The expansion of 5G coverage delivers not only improved connectivity and performance but also the required connectivity and performance "at a price that works" for more edge use cases, Alletto added.

11. 6G's potential influence on edge to emerge

Even as 5G continues to roll out and be heralded for its low latency and high bandwidth, many are already working to bring 6G to the market. Short for sixth-generation wireless, 6G networks use higher frequencies and higher capacity than 5G and still deliver significantly lower latency.

The coming 6G networks will eventually replace 5G connectivity just as 5G is replacing 4G, which displaced earlier generations. As 5G provided capabilities that boosted edge computing and supported new use cases involving edge computing, 6G will offer even more possibilities.

Many tech companies are promoting their efforts on 6G. But the technology remains in early stages, with standardization still a ways off, Witkowski said. "There's a lot of discussion about what 6G might look like in the future, but it's still very much in [design]. There's no such thing as a 6G deployment yet."

What's the likely timetable of 6G? "In about five years, in 2028, we'll see draft standards and release candidates. But we won't see a [finalized] 6G spec until 2030," he said.

12. As edge computing matures, use cases for edge computing will grow

As edge computing matures and becomes more powerful, it can support a larger and more diverse number of use cases, Pelino said.

"It is really opening up many new use cases," she added.

For example, organizations can put more reliable compute power at the edge in remote locations, thereby allowing them to expand activities or address problems in ways they couldn't before, Pelino said. Think adding robotic capabilities in more places thanks to real-time intelligence capabilities delivered with low latency at the edge.

13. Edge enables autonomous actions to happen in (very) remote locales

As organizations push into increasingly remote places both here on Earth and in outer space, they'll need more and more edge compute capacity to enable autonomous capabilities to manage activities in unmanned facilities, Jackson said.

Consider how edge computing would work at an unmanned space station orbiting the moon, he said. Edge devices would ingest and process endpoint-generated data to first determine what action is needed and then they would direct the autonomous performance of those actions, such as assembling equipment or making repairs.

Edge computing could work similarly in deployments at remote locations here on Earth too, Jackson said -- "places where you want intelligence at the edge and also want autonomous actions happening at the edge."

14. Edge supports spatial computing

Edge computing plays a critical role in the growing world of spatial computing -- that is, virtual reality, augmented reality and extended reality, according to Jackson.

Edge devices are needed to process the data necessary for users to experience fully or partially immersive digital environments, he explained. For example, that compute power at the edge might be needed to calculate the distances between objects, determine the height of area buildings or pinpoint a locale on a map at the speed needed to guide people as they move through those spatial computing environments.

Such edge computing for spatial computing is already happening on some gaming consoles, experts noted.

15. Sustainability may get a boost from edge computing

"There is a significant focus on sustainability within edge computing," M said. "The distributed nature of edge inherently supports sustainability by lowering bandwidth usage."

Edge devices might aid enterprise sustainability efforts further through energy-efficient hardware and operational efficiency gains. Additionally, edge devices can be used to support sustainability initiatives in various use cases, M said.

"Several use cases are aimed at reducing carbon footprint, including use cases such as smart homes, smart metering, smart grids, smart cities and smart city traffic management," he explained.

The emergence of analog edge chips will also increase the sustainability of edge computing, M said. "Analog edge chips are designed for specific use cases such as lighting or metering. Given the analog nature of it, it is best suited for edge use cases and by comparison consumes 1/10th of the power a similar like to like digital edge chip will consume."

Mary K. Pratt is an award-winning freelance journalist with a focus on covering enterprise IT and cybersecurity management.