Forrester Research (and others) are predicting 2020 as a landmark year for the expansion of edge computing related to IoT solutions with on-demand compute and real-time apps also driving growth.

While some applications of edge computing will look familiar like processing data at aggregation points instead of in the cloud, others will need form factors adapted to the environment where they deploy, like autonomous vehicles. Consumer vehicles lack the space for a traditional server yet generate massive amounts of actionable data.

The growing availability of 5G network coverage will have a large impact, at least in major cities where 5G will be rolled out first. Promised bandwidth and low latencies might give some companies a choice when it comes to deploying edge computing or sticking with cloud connected by 5G. Candidates for taking advantage of 5G capabilities include smart, real-time video processing, 3D mapping and autonomous drones and robots.

Massive amounts of data gathered in modern manufacturing environments from medicine to heavy industry to utilities are deploying edge computing for low-latency connectivity and automated control. AI and machine learning startups are capitalizing on moving from the cloud to onsite, enabling new levels of rapid insight and functionality.

Forrester says one of the tenants of edge computing implementations will be multiple technologies and vendors. This will open opportunities for vendors able to pull products and services into a single system, yet Forrester said that multivendor solutions are likely to be more popular than single vendor. The reason being that few solution providers will have products addressing all parts of the edge and IoT stacks.

For Uplogix, edge computing is just another network-dependent technology. This means network uptime and, just as importantly, the network running at expected SLAs are critical to business success. With its focus on network management at the edge, Uplogix is well positioned to connect to edge computing gear and ensure it and the network infrastructure it’s attached to are working as intended.