Gartner: IaaS providers have to go beyond the edge

Technology is constantly evolving and those that thought the latest place to pause and develop services was edge computing are being given a nudge by Gartner this week to look further.

Most of this year has seen vendors in the networking and managed services spaces talk about the rise of edge computing and the opportunities that it offers partners.

Gartner is not disputing that the edge is important but is warning infrastructure providers that they need to keep following the demands for customers to deliver 'digital touchpoint services'.

The analyst house defines a digital touchpoint as being any kind of interaction with a digital device, product or service. An example would be a question and answer session with a chatbot or interaction with a fitness tracker.

Gartner is predicting that by 2021 the world will have shifted with 65% of global infrastructure providers generating 55% of their revenues from edge-related services that support digital touckpoints.

“Creating business moments at digital touchpoints is the new scalable way of engaging with customers,” said Rene Buest, senior research director at Gartner. “Infrastructure service providers that fail to embrace this development will lack a presence at digital touchpoints and struggle to interact closely with customers.”

Gartner is using an event in London over the next couple of days to expand on that message and the message to those providing infrastructure is to start thinking about meeting the growing demand for help supporting services that go beyond the edge.

“This enormous growth will need to be backed by reliable end-to-end infrastructure environments that support proximity, and that ensure low latency, high bandwidth, autonomy and privacy,” said Buest. “The cloud is no longer enough. Infrastructure service providers must exploit this growth by extending services beyond the edge in support of digital touchpoints.”

There are several key planks that service providers will have to offer: infrastructure management, integration, security and data management and governance.

Each of those possible services should be attractive to those with infrastructure, security and data management skills.