As businesses discover new use cases and develop the infrastructure to support more IoT applications, the entire Internet of Things continues to evolve. Let’s look at some of the current trends in that evolution.

Table Of Contents

• Top 5 IoT Trends
  1. IoT Cybersecurity Concerns Grow
  2. IoT Advancements In Health Care
  3. 5G Enables More IoT Opportunities
  4. Demand For Specialized IoT Data Management
  5. Bundled IoT For The Enterprise Buyer
• The Future Of IoT
• Bottom Line: IoT Trends

Top 5 IoT Trends

IoT devices can help companies use their data in many ways, including generating, sharing and collecting data throughout their infrastructure. While some companies are leaping into IoT technology, others are more cautious, observing from the sidelines to learn from the experiences of those pioneering IoT.

When looking through these five key trends, keep in mind how IoT devices affect and interact with company infrastructure to solve problems.

1. IoT Cybersecurity Concerns Grow

As new IoT solutions develop quickly, are users being protected from cyber threats and their connected devices? Gabriel Aguiar Noury, robotics product manager at Canonical, which publishes the Ubuntu operating system, believes that as more people gain access to IoT devices and the attack surface grows, IoT companies themselves will need to take responsibility for cybersecurity efforts upfront.

“The IoT market is in a defining stage,” Noury said. “People have adopted more and more IoT devices and connected them to the internet.” At the same time they’re downloading mobile apps to control them while providing passwords and sensitive data without a clear understanding of where they will be stored and how they will be protected—and, in many cases, without even reading the terms and conditions.

“And even more importantly, they’re using devices without checking if they are getting security updates…,” Noury said. “People are not thinking enough about security risks, so it is up to the IoT companies themselves to take control of the situation.”

Ben Goodman, SVP of global business and corporate development at ForgeRock, an access management and identity cloud provider, thinks it’s important that we start thinking of IoT devices as citizens and hold them accountable for the same security and authorization requirements as humans.

“The evolution of IoT security is an increasingly important area to watch,” Goodman said. “Security can no longer be an afterthought prioritized somewhere after connectivity and analytics in the Internet of Things. Organizations need to start treating the ‘things’ in the Internet of Things as first-class citizens.”

Goodman said such a measure would mean that non-human entities are required to register and authenticate and have access granted and revoked, just like humans, helping to ensure oversight and control.

“Doing this for a thing is a unique challenge, because it can’t enter a username or password, answer timely questions, or think for itself,” he said. “However, it represents an incredible opportunity to build a secure network of non-human entities working together securely.”

For more information on IoT and security: Internet of Things (IoT) Security Trends

2. IoT Advancements In Healthcare

The healthcare industry has benefited directly from IoT advancements. Whether it’s support for at-home patient care, medical transportation, or pharmaceutical access, IoT solutions are assisting healthcare professionals with more direct care in situations where they cannot provide affordable or safe hands-on care.

Leon Godwin, principal cloud evangelist for EMEA at Sungard AS, a digital transformation and recovery company, explained that IoT not only makes healthcare more affordable—it also makes care and treatment more accessible and patient-oriented.

“IoT in healthcare will become more prevalent as healthcare providers look to reduce costs and drive better customer experience and engagement,” Godwin said. “This might include advanced sensors that can use light to measure blood pressure, which could be incorporated in watches, smartphones, or standalone devices or apps that can measure caloric intake from smartphone cameras.”

Godwin said that AI is also being used to analyze patient data, genetic information, and blood samples to create new drugs, and after the first experiment using drones to deliver organ transplants across cities happened successfully, rollout is expected more widely.

Jahangir Mohammed, founder and CEO of Twin Health, a digital twin company, thinks that one of the most significant breakthroughs for healthcare and IoT is the ability to constantly monitor health metrics outside of appointments and traditional medical tests.

“Recent innovations in IoT technology are enabling revolutionary advancements in healthcare,” Mohammed said. “Until now, individual health data has been mostly captured at points in time, such as during occasional physician visits or blood labs. As an industry, we lacked the ability to track continuous health data at the individual level at scale.

“Advancements in IoT are shifting this paradigm. Innovations in sensors now make it possible for valuable health information to be continuously collected from individuals.

Mohammed said advancements in AI and Machine Learning, such as digital twin technology and recurrent neural networks, make it possible to conduct real-time analysis and see cause-and-effect relationships within incredibly complex systems.

Neal Shah, CEO of CareYaya, an elder care tech startup, cited a more specific use case for IoT as it relates to supporting elders living at home—a group that suffered from isolation and lack of support during the pandemic.

“I see a lot of trends emerging in IoT innovation for the elderly to live longer at home and avoid institutionalization into a nursing home or assisted living facility,” Shah said. Through research partnerships with university biomedical engineering programs, CareYaya is field testing IoT sensors and devices that help with everything from fall prevention to medication reminders, biometric monitoring of heart rate and blood pressure—even mental health and depression early warning systems through observing trends in wake-up times.

Shah said such IoT innovations will improve safety and monitoring and make it possible for more of the vulnerable elderly population to remain in their own homes instead of moving into assisted living.

For more information on health care in IoT: The Internet of Things (IoT) in Health Care

3. 5G Enables More IoT Opportunities

5G connectivity will make more widespread IoT access possible. Currently, cellular companies and other enterprises are working to make 5G technology available in more areas to support further IoT development.

Bjorn Andersson, senior director of global IoT marketing at Hitachi Vantara, a top-performing IoT and  IT service management company, explained why the next wave of wider 5G access will make all the difference for new IoT use cases and efficiencies.

“With commercial 5G networks already live worldwide, the next wave of 5G expansion will allow organizations to digitize with more mobility, flexibility, reliability, and security,” Andersson said. “Manufacturing plants today must often hardwire all their machines, as Wi-Fi lacks the necessary reliability, bandwidth, or security.”

But 5G delivers the best of two worlds, he said—the flexibility of wireless with the reliability, performance, and security of wired networks. 5G provides enough bandwidth and low latency to have a more flexible impact than a wired network, enabling a whole new set of use cases.

Andersson said 5G will increase the feasibility of distributing massive numbers of small devices that in the aggregate provide enormous value with each bit of data.

“This capacity to rapidly support new apps is happening so early in the deployment cycle that new technologies and infrastructure deployment can happen almost immediately, rather than after decades of soaking it in,” he said. “With its widespread applicability, it will be feasible to deliver 5G even to rural areas and remote facilities far more quickly than with previous Gs.”

For more: Internet of Things (IoT) Software Trends

4. Demand For Specialized IoT Data Management

With its real-time collection of thousands of data points, the IoT solutions strategy focuses heavily on managing metadata about products and services. But the overwhelming amount of data involved means not all IoT developers and users have begun to fully optimize the data they can now access.

Sam Dillard, senior product manager of IoT and edge at InfluxData, a data platform provider for IoT and in-depth analytics use cases, believes that as connected IoT devices expand globally, tech companies will need to find smarter ways to store, manage and analyze the data produced by the Internet of Things.

“All IoT devices generate time-stamped (or time series) data,” Dillard said. “The explosion of this type of data, fueled by the need for more analytics, has accelerated the demand for specialized IoT platforms.”

By 2025, around 60 billion connected devices are projected to be deployed worldwide—the vast majority of which will be connected to IoT platforms, he said. Organizations will have to figure out ways to store the data and make it all sync together seamlessly as IoT deployments continue to scale at a rapid pace.

5. Bundled IoT For The Enterprise Buyer

While the average enterprise buyer might be interested in investing in IoT technology, the initial learning curve can be challenging as IoT developers work to perfect new use cases for users.

Andrew De La Torre, group VP of technology for Oracle Communications at cloud and data management company Oracle, believes that the next big wave of IoT adoption will be in bundled IoT or off-the-shelf IoT solutions that offer user-friendly operational functions and embedded analytics.

Results of a survey of 800 respondents revealed an evolution of priorities in IoT adoption across industries, De La Torre said—most notably, that enterprises are investing in off-the-shelf IoT solutions with a strong desire for connectivity and analytics capabilities built-in.

Because of specific capabilities, commercial off-the-shelf products can extend IoT into other industries thanks to its availability in public marketplaces. When off-the-shelf IoT aligns with industrial needs, it can replace certain components and systems used for general-use practices.

While off-the-shelf IoT is helpful to many companies, there are still risks as it develops—security risks include solution integration, remote accessibility and widespread deployments and usage. Companies using off-the-shelf products should improve security by ensuring that systems are properly integrated, running security assessments, and implementing policies and procedures for acquisitions.

The Future Of IoT

Customer demand changes constantly. IoT services need to develop at the same pace.

Here’s what experts expect the future of Iot development to look like:

Sustainability and IoT

Companies must embrace IoT and its insights so they can pivot to more sustainable practices, using resources responsibly and organizing processes to reduce waste.

There are multiple ways a company can contribute to sustainability in IoT:

• Smart energy management: Using granular IoT sensor data to allow equipment control can eliminate office HVAC system waste and benefit companies financially and with better sustainability practices.
• Extent use style: Using predictive maintenance with IoT can extend the lifespan of a company’s model of manufacturing. IoT will track what needs to be adjusted instead of creating a new model.
• Reusing company assets: Improved IoT information will help a company determine whether it needs a new product by looking at the condition of the assets and use history.

IoT and AI

The combination of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and IoT can cause industries, businesses and economies to function in different ways than either IoT or AI function on their own. The combination of AI and IoT creates machines that have smart behaviors and supports strong decision-making processes.

While IoT deals with devices interacting through the internet, AI works with Machine Learning (ML) to help devices learn from their data.

AI IoT succeeds in the following implementations:

• Managing, analyzing, and obtaining helpful insights from customer data
• Offering quick and accurate analysis
• Adding personalization with data privacy
• Providing assistance to use security against cyber attacks

More Use of IoT in Industries

Healthcare is cited as one of the top IoT industries, but many others are discovering how IoT can benefit their companies.

Agriculture

IoT can be used by farmers to help make informed decisions using agriculture drones to map, image, and survey their farms along with greenhouse automation, monitoring of climate conditions, and cattle monitoring.

IoT enables agriculture companies to have more control over their internal processes while lowering production risks and costs. This will reduce food waste and improve product distribution.

Energy

IoT in the energy sector can improve business performance and customer satisfaction. There are many IoT benefits for energy industry, especially in the following areas:

• Remote monitoring and managing
• Process optimization
• Workload forecasting
• Grid balancing
• Better decision-making

Finance

Banks and customers have become familiar with managing transactions through many connected devices. Because the amount of data transferred and collected is extensive, financial businesses now have the ability to measure risk accurately using IoT.

Banks will start using sensors and data analytics to collect information about customers and offer personalized services based on their activity patterns. Banks will then better understand how their customers handle their money.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing organizations gather data at most stages of the manufacturing process, from product and process assistance through planning, assembly and maintenance.

The IoT applications in the manufacturing industry include:

• Production monitoring: With IoT services’ ability to monitor data patterns, IoT monitoring provides optimization, waste reduction and less mundane work in process inventory.
• Remote equipment management: Remote work has grown in popularity, and IoT services allow tracking and maintaining of equipment’s performance.
• Maintenance notifications: IoT services help optimize machine availability by receiving maintenance notifications when necessary.
• Supply chains: IoT solutions can help manufacturing companies track vehicles and assets, improving manufacturing and supply chain efficiency.

For more industries using IoT: IoT in Smart Cities

Bottom Line: IoT Trends

IoT technology reflects current trends and reaches many areas including AI, security, healthcare, and other industries to improve their processes.

Acknowledging IoT in a business can help a company improve a company structure, and IoT will benefit a company’s infrastructure and applications.

For IoT devices: 85 Top IoT Devices

Particularly with innovations like the cloud, edge computing, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and streaming, big data has become more prevalent for organizations that want to better understand their customers and operational potential. 

Big Data Trends: Table of Contents

• Real Time Analytics
  
• Stronger Reliance on Cloud Storage
  
• Ethical Customer Data Collection
• AI/ML Powered Automation
• Big Data in Different Industries
• Challenges in Big Data
• Bottom Line: Big Data Trends

Real Time Analytics

Real time big data analytics – data that streams moment by moment – is becoming more popular within businesses to help with large and diverse big data sets. This includes structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data from different sizes of data sets.

With real time big data analytics, a company can have faster decision-making, modeling, and predicting of future outcomes and business intelligence (BI). There are many benefits when it comes to real time analytics in businesses:

• Faster decision-making: Companies can access a large amount of data and analyze a variety of sources of data to receive insights and take needed action – fast.
• Cost reduction: Data processing and storage tools can help companies save costs in storing and analyzing data. 
• Operational efficiency: Quickly finding patterns and insights that help a company identify repeated data patterns more efficiently is a competitive advantage. 
• Improved data-driven market: Analyzing real time data from many devices and platforms empowers a company to be data-driven. Customer needs and potential risks can be discovered so they can create new products and services.

Big data analytics can help any company grow and change the way they do business for customers and employees.

For more on structured and unstructured data: Structured vs. Unstructured Data: Key Differences Explained

Stronger Reliance On Cloud Storage

Big data comes into organizations from many different directions, and with the growth of tech, such as streaming data, observational data, or data unrelated to transactions, big data storage capacity is an issue.

In most businesses, traditional on-premises data storage no longer suffices for the terabytes and petabytes of data flowing into the organization. Cloud and hybrid cloud solutions are increasingly being chosen for their simplified storage infrastructure and scalability.

Popular big data cloud storage tools:

• Amazon Web Services S3
• Microsoft Azure Data Lake
• Google Cloud Storage
• Oracle Cloud
• IBM Cloud
• Alibaba Cloud

With an increased reliance on cloud storage, companies have also started to implement other cloud-based solutions, such as cloud-hosted data warehouses and data lakes. 

For more on data warehousing: 15 Best Data Warehouse Software & Tools

Ethical Customer Data Collection 

Much of the increase in big data over the years has come in the form of consumer data or data that is constantly connected to consumers while they use tech such as streaming devices, IoT devices, and social media. 

Data regulations like GDPR require organizations to handle this personal data with care and compliance, but compliance becomes incredibly complicated when companies don’t know where their data is coming from or what sensitive data is stored in their systems. 

That’s why more companies are relying on software and best practices that emphasize ethical customer data collection.

It’s also important to note that many larger organizations that have historically collected and sold personal data are changing their approach, making consumer data less accessible and more expensive to purchase. 

Many smaller companies are now opting into first-party data sourcing, or collecting their own data, not only to ensure compliance with data laws and maintain data quality but also for cost savings.

AI/ML-Powered Automation

One of the most significant big data trends is using big data analytics to power AI/ML automation, both for consumer-facing needs and internal operations. 

Without the depth and breadth of big data, these automated tools would not have the training data necessary to replace human actions at an enterprise.

AI and ML solutions are exciting on their own, but the automation and workflow shortcuts that they enable are business game-changers. 

With the continued growth of big data input for AI/ML solutions, expect to see more predictive and real-time analytics possibilities in everything from workflow automation to customer service chatbots.

Big Data In Different Industries 

Different industries are picking up on big data and seeing many changes in how big data can help their businesses grow and change. From banking to healthcare, big data can help companies grow, change their technology, and provide for their data.

Banking

Banks must use big data for business and customer accounts to identify any cybersecurity risk that may happen. Big data also can help banks have location intelligence to manage and set goals for branch locations.

As big data develops, big data may become a basis for banks to use money more efficiently.

Agriculture

Agriculture is a large industry, and big data is vital within the industry. However, using the growing big data tools such as big data analytics can predict the weather and when it is best to plant or other agricultural situations for farmers.

Because agriculture is one of the most crucial industries, it’s important that big data support it, and it’s vital to help farmers in their processes. 

Real Estate And Property Management 

Understanding current property markets is necessary for anyone looking, selling, or renting a place to live. With big data, real estate firms can have better property analysis, better trends, and an understanding of customers and markets.

Property management companies are also utilizing their big data collected from their buildings to increase performance, find areas of concern, and help with maintenance processes.

Healthcare

Big data is one of the most important technologies within healthcare. Data needs to be collected from all patients to ensure they are receiving the care they need. This includes data on which medicine a patient should take, their vitals are and how they could change, and what a patient should consume. 

Going forward, data collection through devices will be able to help doctors understand their patients at an even deeper level, which can also help doctors save money and deliver better care.

Challenges in Big Data

With every helpful tool, there will be challenges for companies. While big data grows and changes, there are still challenges to solve.

Here are four challenges and how they can be solved:

Misunderstanding In Big Data

Companies and employees need to know how big data works. This includes storage, processing, key issues, and how a company plans to use the big data tools. Without clarity, properly using big data may not be possible.

Solutions: Big data training and workshops can help companies let their employees learn the ins and outs of how the company is using big data and how it benefits the company.

Data Growth

Storing data properly can be difficult, given how constantly data storehouses grow. This can include unstructured data that cannot be found in all databases. As data grows, it is important to know how to handle the data so the challenge can be fixed as soon as possible.

Solutions: Modern techniques, such as compression, tiering, and deduplication can help a company with large data sets. Using these techniques may help a company with growth and remove duplicate data and unwanted data.

Integrating Company Data

Data integration is necessary for analysis, reporting, and BI. These sources may contain social media pages, ERP applications, customer logs, financial reports, e-mails, presentations, and reports created by employees. This can be difficult to integrate, but it is possible.

Solutions: Integration is based on what tools are used for integration. Companies need to research and find the correct tools.

Lack Of Big Data Professionals

Data tools are growing and changing and often need a professional to handle them, including professionals with titles like data scientists, data analysts, and data engineers. However, some of these workers cannot keep up with the changes happening in the market.

Solutions: Investing money into a worker faced with difficulties in tech changes can fix this problem. Despite the expense, this can solve many problems with companies using big data.

Most challenges with big data can be solved with a company’s care and effort. The trends are growing to be more helpful for companies in need, and challenges will decrease as the technology grows. 

For more big data tools: Top 23 Big Data Companies: Which Are The Best?

Bottom Line: Growing Big Data Trends

Big data is changing continuously to help companies across all industries. Even with the challenges, big data trends will help companies as it grows.

Real time analytics, cloud storage, customer data collection, AI/ML automation, and big data across industries can dramatically help companies improve their big data tools.

Lockheed Martin is adopting Red Hat Device Edge to help it support U.S. national security missions by using AI technology in geographic locations that are hard to reach, according to Red Hat last month.

Lockheed Martin and Red Hat believe the use of Red Hat Device Edge will help military platforms “adapt to threat environments” in real-time.

Red Hat Device Edge will provide Lockheed Martin’s military platform with a Kubernetes orchestration solution, MicroShift, built from the capabilities of Red Hat OpenShift, Kubernetes container platform, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Lockheed Martin is considered a key contributor to the MicroShift project to help bring edge capabilities to inaccessible environments. Lockheed Martin plans to use Red Hat Device Edge for a range of military use cases: land, sea, air, space, and cyber.

For instance, the companies are using Red Hat Device Edge to equip U.S. military platforms, such as the Stalker unmanned aerial system (UAS). Red Hat Device Edge is designed to enable small platforms to handle large AI workloads, increasing their field capability and data-backed decision making.

The Stalker used onboard sensors, Red Hat Device Edge, and AI in flying intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions to more accurately classify a military target and improve situational awareness, according to Red Hat.

Lockheed Martin is also using Red Hat OpeShift to enhance Lockheed’s 5G.MIL solutions for communications for the Department of Defense, according to Red Hat.

“Global innovation”

With Red Hat Device Edge, Lockheed Martin is “leading the infusion of cutting-edge commercial technology into military capabilities that deliver advanced solutions to our customers,” said Justin Taylor, VP, AI, Lockheed Martin.

“Unlocking these AI technologies can help national security decision makers stay ahead of adversaries, enabling a safer and more secure world.”

With Red Hat Device Edge, Red Hat will work with Lockheed Martin to “change what communications and artificial intelligence looks like in the most space-constrained and far-flung environments, whether remote mountain ranges or beyond the boundaries of Earth’s atmosphere,” said Francis Chow, VP and GM, in-vehicle operating system and edge, Red Hat. 

Recent Red Hat activity

Over the past year, Red Hat has formed numerous deals and partnerships in various industries, including several recent ones:

• Red Hat OpenShift and Siemens are working to innovate at the factory edge
• Red Hat launched Red Hat Enterprise Linux for AWS
• Crédit Agricole Group’s infrastructure platform is driving automation and operations with Red Hat

The growing AI market

The global artificial intelligence (AI) market was estimated to be valued at $87.04 billion in 2021 and is anticipated to hit $1.59 trillion by 2030, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 38.1%, according to Precedence Research.

Growth in the market is being driven by new technologies using machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL), according to Precedence Research.

The growing military cybersecurity market

The global defense cyber security market is estimated to grow from $19.96 billion in 2021 to $29.81 billion in 2028, at a CAGR of 5.36%, according to Fortune Business Insights.

China, India, and the U.S. are leading the market as they invest in cybersecurity within their defense departments.

Red Hat and Lockheed leaders discuss AI tech

Nick Barcet — senior director of customer-led open innovation at Red Hat — and Greg Forrest — director of AI foundations at Lockheed Martin — talk at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America:

For years, organizations have leveraged analytics with the goal of transforming data into insight and then action. Traditionally, many have relied on an approach known as “centralize and analyze,” where they pool all of their application, service, and system health data into a central repository for indexing and crunching. 

In recent years, this approach has become increasingly problematic from a variety of perspectives, including the difficulty in keeping up with exploding data volumes and subsequently monitoring costs. As teams struggle to harness all of their data in order to optimize overall service health, they find themselves forced to make painful decisions regarding what data to analyze and what to neglect — a very risky proposition given the capricious nature of performance issues. 

As a byproduct of this decision, teams often don’t have the data they need to anticipate or quickly resolve issues. This shows in the fact that despite technology advancements and the industry’s strong investment in resiliency, outages persist, with the number of outages lasting more than 24 hours increasing substantially. 

Here, we’ll explore how a new approach to monitoring applications solves this problem. Rather than compressing and shipping massive data volumes to compute resources downstream, this new approach flips traditional monitoring on its head. Now, it is possible to push your compute to your datasets. Pushing data analytics upstream — or processing data at the edge — can help organizations overcome certain challenges and maximize the value of their data and analytics.

Analyzing all application and system health data at its source

Bringing compute resources geographically closer to users reduces latency and helps organizations deliver significantly better user performance as well as the ability to monitor new services without creating bottlenecks in downstream systems and on-premise data centers. Simply put, teams no longer need to predict upfront which datasets are valuable and worth analyzing in order to fix issues that can impact the customer’s/user’s experience.

Pushing analytics upstream to the edge can help organizations avoid such dilemmas by processing all application, service, and system health data at various points across the edge, simultaneously and broken down into bite-sized chunks. This allows organizations to effectively have an eye on all their data, without having to neglect even a single dataset.

See more: Top Edge Data Center Companies

Safeguarding and driving conversions

For transaction-heavy online services — e-commerce companies and travel booking sites, for example — highly performing applications and systems are the lifeblood of the business. When these applications go down — or even slow down, by as little as a few milliseconds — the result is a noticeable hit to conversion rates. According to statistics, the highest e-commerce conversion rates occur on sites with web page load times between 0-2 seconds, and with each additional second of load time, website conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42%. These statistics also note that a site that loads in one second has a conversion rate three times higher than a site that loads in five seconds.

In this context, mean-time-to-detect (MTTD) and mean-time-to-respond (MTTR) requirements are exceedingly slim, essentially zero. As discussed above, pushing analytics upstream enables teams to more proactively identify and address anomalies, while also intuitively pinpointing the exact location of growing hot spots or a particular infrastructure or application running on it. Teams can fix problems much faster, ideally before user performance is impacted in the first place — which is perhaps the most important step in safeguarding conversions. 

But when it comes to actually increasing conversions, application and system health data are not the only type of data that can benefit from analytics being pushed further upstream. Today, nearly three out of every four dollars spent on online purchases is done so through a mobile device. A matter of nanoseconds can mean the difference between capitalizing on a site visitor’s ephemeral attention span — or not. When customer behavioral data is processed at the edge — thus avoiding long-distance communication flows back to the cloud — an organization can become much more agile and instantaneous in delivering highly personalized, high-velocity marketing that fuels conversions.

See more: How Edge Data Centers are Used by Comcast, TED, Goodwill, Georgia Tech, Zaxby’s, Villa-Tech, and Afterpay: Case Studies

Keeping a lid on monitoring costs

The old “centralize and analyze” approach entailed routing all application and system health data to hot, searchable, and relatively expensive retention tiers. Many organizations experience sticker shock as they run up against, and in many cases, unknowingly exceed, data usage limits. One alternative is to purchase in advance more capacity than one may actually end up needing, but small businesses in particular can’t afford to be spending money on capacity they don’t ultimately use. Another drawback is the more data is in a repository, the longer the expected search time tends to be.

In the context of these challenges — and as edge processing grows — data stores need to follow suit. Gartner estimates that by 2025, 70% of organizations will switch their analytics approaches from “big” to “small and wide,” and a key enabling factor is that the edge offers tremendous flexibility and creates space for more real-time data analysis across larger volumes of data. When analytics are pushed upstream, organizations process their data then and there, right at the source. From there, teams can move their data to a more low-cost storage option in the cloud, where it remains searchable. 

Whether driven by compliance requirements, the desire to mine historical data for further analysis, or something else — there are going to be occasions where teams do need access to all their data. In these cases, it will be there, readily and easily available to anyone who needs it, without exhausting or exceeding budgets in the process. 

Conclusion

As data volumes grow exponentially, processing data at the edge becomes the most feasible way to cost-effectively and comprehensively leverage an organization’s rich data. Now, teams can realize the potential to analyze all of their data to ensure high performance, uptime, and strong user experiences.

See more: 5 Top Edge Data Center Trends 

Enterprises typically work with edge data centers to be more hands-on with the data, reduce latency, and extract more front-line analytics. 

The edge data center market is estimated to grow from a value of around $6.5 billion in 2020 to $21.4 billion by 2027, according to ResearchandMarkets.

See below to learn all about edge data center technologies and the top companies in the edge data center market:

For more: The Edge Data Center Market

Choosing the edge data center companies

• Top edge data center companies

• • American Tower

• • Edge Data Solutions

• • Edgeconnex

• • Frontier Communications

• • H5 Data Centers

• • Leading Edge DC

• • SBA Edge

• • Proximity Data Centres

• • Dart Points

• • 1623 Farnam

• Edge data center companies features

• Edge data center companies benefits

• Use cases

Top edge data center companies

American Tower

Boston-based American Tower is a telecommunications company that has about 222,000 communication sites, with about 43,000 sites in the United States and Canada, and American Tower has about 179,000 properties internationally. American Tower’s portfolio includes American Tower Edge Data Centers.

American Tower Edge Data Centers can give enterprise network elasticity optimization; provide disaster recovery and network redundancy; offer cloud services; security enhancement; high-bandwidth connections; and have other applications such as artificial intelligence (AI) autonomous driving, and the internet of things (IoT).

“American Tower is a business interested in B2B relationships, which is rare in the data center industry. Working with major data center providers, sometimes the relationships are purely transactional. The fact that American Tower is B2B focused means a lot to Villa-Tech and our customers,” says Miguel Villarreal, Principal, Villa-Tech, Inc., a user of American Tower Edge Data Centers.

American Tower Edge Data Centers won the 2021 Light Reading Leading Light Awards for their innovative edge computing solutions, by Villa-Tech, Inc.

Differentiators

• Man-trap doors
• Network Ops Center (NOC)
• Remote hands services

Pricing

For pricing, go to American Tower’s contact page.

Edge Data Solutions

Edge Data Solutions, based in Atlanta, Georgia, is an IT services and consulting company that specializes in data centers, crypto mining, and cloud infrastructure. Edge Data Solutions also has an emphasis on edge data centers. Their benefits are based on their five key pillars: reliability, efficiency, sustainability, profitability, and scalability.

Edge Data Solution’s edge data centers want to reduce the CO2 footprint of data centers. The approach has three parts: data center tanks, enterprise modular containers, and edge fluids. The data center tanks are stainless steel tanks that are racked to accommodate 21” wide servers. The enterprise modular containers are made to sustain high winds and heavy loads enabling the operator to move quickly. The edge fluids give hardware protection, customized solution, reduced hash rate spikes, and are professionally engineered.

“EDGE’s first-of-a-kind solutions provide the best overclock performance free of hash rate peaks while giving the blockchain community a unique opportunity to lead the world in next-generation cooling technology,” says Daniel Wong, co-founder and president of Edge Data Solution.

Differentiators

• Three separate parts
• Maximize hardware efficiency and lifespan by 30%
• 60% less of a footprint

Pricing

For pricing, go to the Edge Data Solutions contact page.

EdgeConneX

Herdon, Virginia-based EdgeConneX is a telecommunications company that focuses on keeping up with the growing demand for data, content, cloud services, and computing.  EdgeConneX has 40 data centers globally that cover edge, far edge, and hyper-scale data centers. EdgeConneX data centers, Edge Data Centers, are some of the top products in edge data centers.

Edge data centers are designed to be in the correct proximity for an enterprise, assist in delivering and distributing digital content, have high-density power of up to 30 kW per rack, offer network diversity, and offer a self-service management application called EdgeOS.

“The EdgeConneX Edge Data Center model enables new opportunities for in-market interconnection that offer a substantial performance improvement over the traditional centralized interconnection model,” says Noam Freedman, senior VP, Networks & Chief Network Architect at Akamai Technologies, a user of EdgeConneX Edge Data Centers.

EdgeConneX won the “Competitive Strategy Leadership Award” by Frost & Sullivan.

Differentiators

• EdgeOS
• Network diversity (MSOs, ISPs, fiber, mobile provider)
• up to 30kW per rack

Pricing

For pricing, go to EdgeConneX contact us page.

Frontier Communications

Frontier Communications, based in Norwalk, Connecticut, is a telecommunications company that offers gigabit speeds for consumers and businesses in 25 states. Frontier aims to build critical digital infrastructure across the country with its fiber-optic network and cloud-based solutions and provide edge data centers for their customers.

Frontier Communications is working towards edge data centers to be able to process remote applications like IoT and 5G networks to advanced innovations like AI and quantum computing. Frontier Communications’ customers need access to their applications and data. Frontier Communications aims to bring data and workloads closer to their customers. They have 180,000 miles of fiber for their network and over 2,500 edge locations nationwide.

“We’re gonna keep on with the hard graft of building fiber as fast as we can, selling it as actively as we can, really improving customer care, becoming more efficient, and delivering what I hope is going to be the net of this, which is a truly great American turnaround story,” says Nick Jeffery, Frontier CEO, on their technology growth strategy.

Frontier Communications was recognized and awarded the “Most Innovative Broadband Project Award” by NY State Broadband Summit and Awards Ceremony.

Differentiators

• Supports high bandwidths 100G to 400G services
• 180,000 miles of fiber
• Traditional networking and edge colocation

Pricing

For pricing, go to Frontier’s buy page.

H5 Data Centers

H5 Data Centers is an IT services and consulting company located in Englewood, Colorado. It is a private owner data center operation in the United States with over three million square feet of data centers. H5 Data Centers runs nine edge data centers across the U.S.

H5 Data Centers’ edge data centers aim to support the needs of Ethernet providers, content companies, network operators, internet exchanges, and cloud service providers across the country.

“H5 Data Centers continues to make investments across our national footprint to improve the reliability and efficiency of our data centers. We are committed to energy efficiency innovation and long-term sustainability,” said Josh Simms, CEO of H5 Data Centers.

H5 Data Centers was awarded the “Data Center Efficiency Award” by Xcel Energy.

Differentiators

• Network operators ROBCs, ILECs, mobile, cable companies
• Latency-sensitive apps such as multi-player gaming, virtual reality (VR), and self-driving cars
• Peering-internet exchange access

Pricing

For pricing information, go to the H5 Data Centers contact us page.

See more: 10 Top Data Center Certifications

Leading Edge DC

Leading Edge Data Centres, based in North Sydney, Australia, is a data center operations company that’s mission is to “bridge the digital divide of metropolitan and regional Australia”. Leading Edge DC offers many products: colocation services, internet connectivity, cross-connect, and data centre interconnect. Customer premises, regional edge data centre, and metro data centre are their main use cases. Leading Edge DC’s regional edge data centre is one of Leading Edge DC’s largest products.

The regional edge data centre is where Leading Edge DC is focused with a regional edge space of 1-5 ms latency. The regional edge data centre can be close to enterprises for the best experience, build to tier-3 data centres, scalable space with high-density power, fixed OpEx investment, connected 3rd party service providers, and the business continuity of 99.985% uptime SLA.

“With a local data centre, I can build and create the configuration I need for our business needs and IT architecture, access the services, speed, stability, and security that we require, all while eliminating the cost of downtime, maintenance, and corporate overhead,” says Angus Collins IT Manager, JT Fossey Cars and Trucks, a user of Leading Edge DC.

Leading Edge DC was recognized as one of the Top Tech Startups in Australia by Tracxn and won “The Edge Award” by DataCloud.

Differentiators

• Connect to third-party service providers
• Built to Tier-3 data center standards
• Fixed OpEx investment

Pricing

For pricing, go to Leading Edge DC’s contact us page or book a tour.

SBA Edge

SBA Edge is a colocation facility that provides data center solutions. SBA Edge Data Centers’ parent company, SBA Communications, develops new tower sites to expand their tower portfolio. The tower portfolio is the backbone for their edge computing capabilities, with both data centers and infrastructure at their towers. SBA Edge data centers are a large focus of their business.

SBA Edge has more than 32,500 communications sites in 14 markets throughout the Americas and South Africa. SBA Edge offers the infrastructure to deploy edge data centers for edge computing solutions. There are three main locations for the edge data centers. One is in West Chicago, one in Jacksonville, Florida, and the other is named tower to the edge. SBA has 100% infrastructure SLAs, over 400 customers, two large peering exchanges, 100% power uptime since inception, and customizable deployment options for businesses they work with.

“I have been with this data center for over seven years and had the pleasure of visiting the center. As a QSA auditor for the PCI-PSA, I have to say this data center is top notch and they follow all security protocols. … The IT support is beyond reproach, during the seven years I cannot recall any substantial outage, I feel they were up well over 99.9%,” says a user of SBA Edge data centers.

SBA Edge has multiple certifications to maximize the reliability of their data centers including SSAE 18, PCI, Open-IX, as well as being HIPAA Certified.

Differentiators

• SSAE-18 SOC I Type II certified, HIPAA and PCI Compliant, OIX-2 Certified
• 100% uptime SLA
• Water system cooling

Pricing

For pricing, go to the estimate now page.

Proximity Data Centres

UK-based Proximity Data Centres is a network of 20 internet edge data centres with low latency colocation services. Proximity Data Centres aims to have their edge data centers within 15 miles of 95% of the UK population, and while they have customers that are both large enterprises and small businesses, Proximity Data Centres seek to protect all of their customers’ data.

Proximity Data Centres’ edge data centers are made for businesses who want to keep pace with the rising demand for more data storage and security. 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT), cloud gaming, and other entertainment services are growing every day, making businesses need to stay caught up. With their 1000s of customers and over 134,000 square feet of data centers, Proximity Data Centres works to satisfy and grow their customer experience.

“Edge data centers will play a pivotal role in ensuring the whole of the UK, not just its major cities, is reaping the rewards of 5G,” says John Hall, managing director, Proximity Data Centres about the need for edge data centers.

Proximity Data Centres was recognized as one of the 100 edge computing companies to watch in 2022, by STL.

Differentiators

• CCTV, VESDA, and IG55 fire suppression
• ISO9001, 14001, 27001 certification
• Over 2,000 racks

Pricing

For pricing, reach out to Proximity Data Centres at info@proximitydatacentres.com.

Dart Points

Dallas-based DartPoints is an IT services and consulting company that works with cloud, data center, and managed services. With around 170 data centers, DartPoints has multiple edge data centers to connect millions of consumers and businesses in 25 states. DartPoints also focuses on edge interconnection data centers for carriers, enterprises, and content providers by harnessing the power of interconnection.

DartPoints’ Edge data centers are working to manage, process, and fulfill data traffic, as well as providing 24×7 CCTV monitoring, dual authentication entry, and individually secured cabinets for security; carrier-neutral partner ecosystem for scalable and collective growth; multi-tenant, shared-cost model; and SSAE 18 SOC 2 Certified, HIPAA, and PCI SAQ-D compliance.

“The benefit of working with DartPoints is reflected in the sense of security we have housing our data and server systems in their facility. We can rely on DartPoints, and knowing our systems are running properly, we can focus on other tasks instead of wasting time making sure our servers are running,” says Cody Reid, IT systems admin, Tupelo Honey Café, a user of DartPoints.

DartPoints made the Datacloud Global Awards 2021 shortlist for The Edge Award 2021 category and received recognition for DartPoints’ innovative approach to edge colocation and interconnection building, as the company also earned the 2020 “DCD Global Awards Edge Project of the Year”.

Differentiators

• Pay as you grow
• Nationwide SLAs and N+1
• Carrier-neutral partner ecosystem

Pricing

For pricing, go to DartPoints’ contact page.

1623 Farnam

1623 Farnam is a computer and network security company based in Omaha, Nebraska. 1623 Farnam offers access to 50 network companies that have local, regional, national and international reach with 75,000 square feet of space. Omaha Interconnected Edge Data Center, 1623 Farnam’s edge data center, offers security for an enterprise’s infrastructure and applications.

1623 Farnam’s edge data center offers a minimum suite of 1,000 square feet, has more than 50 carriers with Omaha IX both IP and peering exchange, 120/208 volt AC power with N+1 UPS available, environmental awareness, and security every day of the year. They are certified in SOC2 Type 1, SOC2 type 2, ISO, and BCP.

“We are very excited to unveil this rebrand of Omaha IX. Omaha IX is a really big differentiator for us at 1623 Farnam, and we are very proud to host it. It gives our customers a unique opportunity to peer without hassle, and does a great deal to strengthen and diversify our network ecosystem,” says 1623 Farnam President, Todd Cushing, on the growth of their data centers.

Differentiators

• Pre-action dry pipe zoned interlock detection
• Facial/bio/proxy to data center space
• Powered shell, build-to-suit, managed suites

Pricing

For pricing, go to 1623 Farnam’s get started page.

Edge data center features

Location: allow enterprises to be closer to customer data

Size: smaller footprint makes it easier to process real-time data in direct communication with devices

Network: either connect to the main network or a network of other edge data centers

Hub and mobile: with edge hubs being located in the center of the network, mobile data centers, or spokes, are small and located at the edge of the data center

Edge data center benefits

• Enhanced speed
• Bandwidth relief
• Data management
• Cybersecurity
• Reliability
• Disaster recovery
• Speed

Use cases

Zaxby’s

Zaxby’s is a fast-casual chicken brand based in Athens, Georgia. 

Zaxby’s required a disaster recovery and colocation site that was close to their headquarters. They also needed the data center requirements but wanted more of a partnership and support with company growth.

Zaxby’s moved data to DartPoints’ Asheville, North Carolina edge location, which is both close to the chain’s headquarters and a favorable weather area. The relationship with DartPoints left Zaxby’s comfortable and feeling safe about their data protection.

“I would most definitely recommend DartPoints to my peers. From day one, the DartPoints team has been very professional, always helpful, and very knowledgeable about the data center space itself and what they have in the data center,” says Kevin Blount, director of IT operations and security, Zaxby’s.

Windstream Wholesale

Windstream Wholesale provides connectivity between major domestic data centers. They have built into 150 data centers in the U.S.

Windstream Wholesale needed to improve their capacity and fast connections. They chose to get assistance from 1623 Farnam and the provider’s edge data center in Omaha, Nebraska, which is ideal to improve connections and access for Windstream’s customers.

“We’ve seen about a 30% increase in data traffic and about a 50% increase in voice traffic. …  And I’m very proud to say that there is no congestion anywhere on our network,” says John Nishimoto, VP strategy and product development, Windstream Wholesale.

See more: The Data Center Storage Market

Organizations’ data storage, compute, networking needs are rising rapidly. Conventional data centers help offload on-premises resources, but their remote locations can introduce latency and reliability issues. Edge computing brings the cloud closer, using a network of smaller, more local data centers and distributing compute demands across devices.

Given these benefits, experts expect the edge data center market to nearly triple in value by 2024, reaching a worth of $13.5 billion.

Here are seven case studies on how edge data centers are benefiting some of leading organizations in different industries:

1. Comcast

Comcast is one of the most familiar names in internet services. As such, it faced tremendous expectations when upgrading its business customers’ enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

Keeping the system on-premises would mean completely rebuilding existing data centers, introducing substantial costs. Scaling over time would incur similar expenses, thanks to the considerable infrastructure needs. Edge computing provided an ideal solution.

Comcast partnered with EdgeConneX to develop an edge computing system to connect Comcast’s clients directly to Amazon Web Services (AWS). Software-defined networking (SDN) helped reduce on-premises needs as distributed, local computing prevented the need for larger data centers. As a result, the new ERP solution offered improved connectivity and scalability while keeping costs manageable.

Both Comcast and their initial ERP customer saw improvements after implementing the new edge solution. The end user reduced latency, reduced ongoing costs, and improved network consistency, while Comcast saw increased revenue from other customers seeking similar systems.

Industry: Communications

Edge data center product: EdgeConneX

Outcomes:

• End user reduced latency by more than 50%
• Comcast’s monthly revenues increased by 10 times
• Net operating costs fell
• Avoided having to rebuild on-premises data centers

2. Zaxby’s

The restaurant industry may not be the first sector that comes to mind when thinking of network technologies, but it can benefit from edge computing, too. Zaxby’s, a fast-growing fried chicken brand with locations across the U.S., is a leading example. When the chain needed to move its disaster recovery (DR) site, edge data centers emerged as a clear answer.

With more than 900 locations to manage, DR is a crucial consideration for Zaxby’s. Moving its DR data center closer to its Athens, Georgia, headquarters was a necessary step to ensure it could maintain network uptime in an emergency. However, conventional infrastructure would incur high costs and may not perform well in an actual disaster.

Edge data centers let the chain create a new DR site closer to headquarters while staying out of the way of weather-related risks. Edge computing’s distributed compute features would also help ensure mission-critical processes continue even if some infrastructure was compromised.

Opting for these newer data center technologies also helped Zaxby’s reduce operating costs. And lower infrastructure needs and complexity made it easier to access technical support.

Industry: Food service

Edge data center product: DartPoints

Outcomes:

• Halved disaster recovery costs
• Increased network resiliency
• Enabled 24/7 network support

3. Afterpay

Financial technology (FinTech) has thoroughly disrupted the banking industry, with companies like Afterpay leading the charge. As one of the world’s most recognizable buy-now-pay-later providers, Afterpay’s networking and compute demands are substantial.

Afterpay’s platform must calculate creditworthiness in near-real-time for its customers across the world. Working on mobile devices with potentially limited connectivity further complicates things. When the company experienced a 289% year-over-year growth in sales on its platform, it knew it needed to bolster its IT environment.

Edge computing was a natural choice, as there’s no data transmission required in many cases. Logic happens at the source of the data. As a result, switching to an edge network lets Afterpay reduce its latency and improve performance for its rapidly expanding customer base.

Strategic edge deployments also improved operations for Afterpay’s growing number of employees. With less latency and faster results, IT teams could resolve issues and monitor networks faster and more effectively. Moving to a distributed computing environment also helped improve the company’s scalability, a crucial factor in an industry as quickly evolving as FinTech.

Industry: FinTech

Edge data center product: Digital Realty

Outcomes:

• Quicker access to cloud resources for 450+ employees
• Reduced latency for both workers and customers
• Created a simplified and more scalable experience

4. Villa-Tech

Considering edge computing is an extension of the cloud, it should come as no surprise that edge data centers can benefit cloud services providers, too. Villa-Tech is one such provider, offering services like software-defined networking, cybersecurity surveillance, and software development to its clients.

As Villa-Tech expanded, it saw an opportunity to expand its reach and services in edge computing. The edge would enable it to provide the flexibility of public cloud solutions while maintaining the control, security, and performance of dedicated private infrastructure. It would also open the door to new business opportunities for B2B clients seeking lower latencies and increased performance.

Villa-Tech partnered with American Tower to enable this expansion. As the companies built a new edge network, Villa-Tech saw a 60% growth in the edge data space. Now, the business is focusing on delivering a security and agility software stack into edge environments.

With this new edge infrastructure, Villa-Tech can reach more clients and raise its product promises higher. The edge’s speed and reliability increase the efficacy of security monitoring and software-defined networking services, which make up some of Villa-Tech’s most important offerings.

Industry: Cloud services

Edge data center product: American Tower

Outcomes:

• 60% growth in edge data in six months
• New product offerings for customers
• Reduced latency and increased network uptime

5. TED

Media companies can also capitalize on edge data centers, as was the case with TED. While the company’s popular TED Talks were once only available in-person, they pivoted to move all their content online as internet video media took off. As this became the company’s focus, its network demands required a change.

TED’s original network offered just 250 Mbps for office workers, which became an issue as the company began transferring larger video files. A large transfer would interrupt connectivity for most employees for minutes at a time. While TED needed to capitalize on online services, it needed a way to do so that didn’t interfere with other office operations.

Edge data centers offered more bandwidth for less money than a conventional on-premises or remote cloud setup. Smaller, distributed colocation data centers gave TED the speeds and latency they needed to upload and transfer large files without interrupting other workflows. These resources now let TED’s teams remain productive even at peak demand hours.

Industry: Media

Edge data center product: 365 Data Centers

Outcomes:

• Created a low-latency, 2 Gbps network
• Enabled video transfers in near-real-time from eight high-definition cameras
• Improved office productivity

6. Georgia Tech

Higher education is another industry with significant data demands. Providing enough speed, performance, and security for thousands of students and faculty is a challenging task with conventional infrastructure. Edge networks’ distributed compute abilities make them an ideal solution.

The Georgia Institute of Technology recently capitalized on that potential. The university dealt with billions of files and petabytes of data on a daily basis and sought to build a high-performance computing cluster (HPCC) to manage it all.

The sheer computing power needed for HPCC operations requires significant cooling infrastructure and space management in conventional data centers. By distributing these processes across multiple systems, edge computing can reduce those requirements. As a result, Georgia Tech researchers can perform more complicated tasks without as high costs.

The Georgia Tech solution consists of several smaller data centers, each serving unique needs. Data can flow between them easily and quickly, providing sufficient compute speed while managing network strain.

Industry: Education

Edge data center product: DataBank

Outcomes:

• Built a cost-effective but reliable HPCC solution
• Increased network backup capacity
• Mitigated cooling and infrastructure requirements while maximizing computing power

7. Goodwill

A perhaps more surprising case study for edge data centers comes from Goodwill. The nonprofit’s central Texas chain of stores previously relied on a conventional on-premises solution, but this didn’t fit their needs for several reasons.

First, conventional on-premises data centers came with high infrastructure needs and costs. Second, the organization needed a more reliable disaster recovery plan, which required something more resilient than a large in-house data center. Finally, Goodwill lacked the technical skills and staff to manage their growing network with the same setup.

Transitioning to an edge environment solved each of those challenges. Goodwill was able to migrate with zero downtime to a managed edge network. Using smaller data centers also provided more reliability and uptime while minimizing the organization’s data footprint.

Using this edge system also reduces IT management needs on Goodwill’s side, helping their employees focus on their core workflows. Using a distributed system also helps keep related costs low.

Industry: Nonprofit

Edge data center product: LightEdge

Outcomes:

• Migrated to a managed system with zero downtime
• Enabled more resilient disaster recovery
• Reduced infrastructure and in-house IT needs

Especially as companies begin to tap into the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and other smart devices and services, enterprise 5G solutions offer the connectivity, bandwidth, and speed necessary to make these advances possible. 

If your enterprise is looking for new ways to optimize your mobile network for internal operations and external initiatives, use this guide to better understand enterprise 5G and what the top providers offer to differentiate themselves in this emerging market:

Choosing the Right Enterprise 5G Network

• Features of an enterprise 5G network

• Benefits of an enterprise 5G network

• Top enterprise 5G providers
  • AT&T
  • Ericsson
  • Nokia
  • Verizon
  • AWS
  • Geoverse
  • T-Mobile

• Enterprise 5G: vendor comparison table

• What to look for in an enterprise 5G network

Also read: The Mobile Device Management Market (MDM) Market

Features of an enterprise 5G network

An enterprise 5G network, sometimes called a private 5G network, consists of many different pieces. Private 5G networks cannot offer enterprises the ultra-low latency they’ve come to expect from 5G unless enterprises invest in the following services, equipment, and other key features of an enterprise 5G network:

Private spectrum access

Enterprises have to purchase dedicated spectrum in order to set up and run an enterprise 5G network. This spectrum gives access to a set of certain wireless frequencies that keep the network privately running.

5G hardware and infrastructure

Mobile service providers typically set up all of the necessary equipment for a public network, but in an enterprise 5G network, the enterprise is responsible for setting up its own hardware and equipment. Equipment that enterprises must purchase from infrastructure and hardware providers includes base stations, mini-towers, small cells, and next-generation wireless 5G radio antennas.

Edge and 5G devices

5G only works effectively with mobile devices that have been designed for 5G service. But these kinds of devices are not only necessary so users can actually use the modern network; 5G and edge devices support the operations of the 5G mobile network as a whole. These edge devices distribute and offset centralized bandwidth needs, which results in lower latency for all devices running on the network. Most enterprises need embedded modules and nodes in their facilities for 5G to work, but mobile devices like smartphones, routers, and gateways offer additional points of connection and data transmission.

Managed service partners and systems integrators

Setting up enterprise 5G is expensive, complex, and time consuming. Few companies have enough internal knowledge to get their network deployed on their own, so they must rely on third-party partners and systems integrators. These external 5G expert teams focus on proper configuration, security concerns, and industry-specific requirements to incorporate into the private spectrum.

Regulatory support tools

Enterprise 5G networks involve more mobile devices and endpoints with varying levels of native security. As a result, companies can fall into serious security and regulatory compliance problems if they don’t add support tools and features to their new network. Policy management, network management, identity and access management (IAM), and other user- and device-level security solutions are particularly helpful in this area of 5G implementation.

More on user-level mobile management: The Mobile Identity Management (MIM) Market

Benefits of an enterprise 5G network

Enterprises, especially ones that depend on a smart assembly line and real-time software processes, are turning to enterprise 5G because of the network’s bandwidth, low latency, and speed that support a growing number of smart devices. Enterprises that make the costly investment in 5G for business can realize several key benefits:

Support for smart tech innovation

The latest smart technologies cannot be developed, maintained, or deployed without the processing bandwidth and low latencies that 5G offers. Although 4G LTE has supported some of these innovations, enterprises have been able to innovate more in areas like smart factory infrastructure, robotics, and IoT devices for operational and end user use cases.

Improved performance, visibility, and security through isolation

A private 5G network blocks public traffic from interfering with business operations and network performance management. Especially for companies that are innovating in IoT and AI/ML, dedicated bandwidth is important for quick and accurate big data transmissions. With enterprise 5G, network administrators can focus on optimizing the enterprise traffic they expect to see on the network. With more focus on user access management and authorization, network security professionals can also better identify anomalous traffic and behaviors.

Global availability of enterprise 5G

Public 5G is not yet available in most areas of the world, but enterprise 5G can be made available anywhere a company is willing to invest in the appropriate spectrum and equipment. This means that employees and operations can benefit from the reliability, high data transmission rates, and scalability of 5G, regardless of where they’re working.

Operational backbone for edge and IoT devices

The latest 5G and IoT devices cannot function without the networking capacity of 5G. 5G is the first mobile network that’s truly capable of processing the large sums of data that IoT can produce, both on the cloud and the edge. These devices can make working processes smoother, offer new products and services to customers, and lead to technologies that change how the world works, like autonomous vehicles.

Also read: The Internet of Things (IoT) Edge Computing Market

New opportunities for sustainable business practices

5G-powered devices and equipment also present opportunities in the area of global sustainability. Smart energy solutions, such as smart irrigation systems, lights, and assembly lines, can help companies use energy more efficiently and decrease their carbon footprint.

Learn more from Enterprise Networking Planet: The Role 5G Can Play in Global Sustainability Efforts

Top Enterprise 5G providers

AT&T

AT&T is a top mobile service provider in enterprise mobility. The company is one of the leading researchers in the enterprise 5G space and is focused on creating event-based 5G solutions that take into account different traffic patterns. Their pioneering solution in the 5G event space is Private Cellular Networks Events, which includes rapid 5G+ mmWave temporary deployments and data-only connectivity options.

AT&T also offers one of the widest partner networks in the enterprise 5G space, and their research efforts not only focus on expanding 5G use cases but finding new partners to deliver on those solutions. Current use cases for AT&T enterprise 5G include smart factory insights and more catered fan experiences in stadiums.

Differentiators

• Samsung, LG, Motorola, and Netgear 5G devices available
• AT&T Multi-Access Edge Computing feature
• AT&T Private Cellular Networks Events version with 5G access
• Rapid 5G+ mmWave temporary deployments
• AT&T Wireless Broadband for additional deployment and backup support

Learn more in our AT&T Enterprise 5G Review.

Ericsson

Ericsson is not only a top 5G telecom services provider but also provides infrastructural hardware and software solutions for 5G. They say they’ve brought 5G to four continents, and they hold the rights to many important 5G patents.

Their research and 5G footprint continue to grow, but Ericsson particularly stands out as a provider because of its flexible, transitional approach to 5G infrastructure and devices. Many of their 5G solutions are designed to work with older devices and 3G/4G equipment, which is helpful for companies looking to make a smooth transition from one mobile network strategy to another and fully transition to 5G.

Differentiators

• Ericsson Radio System for scalable coverage needs
• Existing hardware can be used in 5G rollouts through Ericsson Spectrum Sharing
• Portfolio of 85 service partners from all over the globe
• Core network automation features with edge, slicing, and exposure support
• Stand-alone and integrated 5G private networks available

Nokia

Nokia is an international provider that focuses on mobile infrastructure and IoT solutions, but they’re also one of the leading providers for enterprise 5G services. Nokia plays a smaller role in user device deployment than most other providers on this list. However, they stand out with the process management solutions they offer for enterprise 5G rollout. 

In this area, Nokia offers the Agile Rules Technology (A.R.T.) solution. It is Nokia’s rules engine that creates call flow models, sets data requirements for a spectrum, and otherwise identifies and standardizes networks for common enterprise mobile use cases. A.R.T. leads to many benefits for business users, including efficiencies in the Signaling part of the platform. Notably, Nokia also has one of the industry’s first 5G edge slicing solutions.

Differentiators

• Industrial service support provided through catered network signaling
• One of the first and most advanced 5G edge slicing solutions on the market
• Compatible with several containers and other cloud platform deployment options, including Nokia Container Services, RedHat OpenShift, VMware Tanzu, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure
• Service intent orchestration and cross-domain automation capabilities
• Nokia Core offers multi-vendor continuous delivery

Verizon

Verizon does not offer the same enterprise 5G coverage and mature services as providers like AT&T, but they are cornering the market for some specialized industries and their mobility needs. Particularly in government and education, Verizon extends some of the best focused customer support, security, and compliance features to meet those sectors’ most important networking needs. 

Beyond their support for vertical markets, Verizon is also a top leader in the research portion of enterprise 5G rollout and has brought several interesting solutions to the market. One such enterprise 5G-adjacent solution is THOR, which is Verizon’s rapid command center for flexible mobile network deployment.

Differentiators

• Crowd Analytics solution for improved live user experiences
• Specialized knowledge of networking for public sector organizations across federal agencies, state and local governments, public safety agencies, and educational institutions
• 5G Business Internet and on-site 5G solutions
• Verizon 5G Edge mobile edge computing platform
• Business 5G devices from Apple, Samsung, Google, and Motorola

Learn more in our Verizon Enterprise 5G Review.

AWS

AWS is lesser known in the 5G innovation race, but their cloud, AI/machine learning (ML), and services background makes them a strong option among private 5G service providers. This enterprise 5G solution balances a variety of managed services with self-service dashboards and consoles, which makes it a good fit for teams that want a flexible 5G implementation model with strong vendor support.

Licensing and scaling for AWS’s enterprise 5G are also flexible and scalable. Their pay-as-you-go pricing includes few upfront equipment or installation charges, and their real-time approach to scaling allows companies to connect and visualize their network and application infrastructure before starting the capacity planning process. As companies realize they need more or fewer features to help their network run, self-service allows them to make these changes based on their business objectives and timelines.

Differentiators

• Managed service with self-service features on the AWS Console and via APIs
• Spectrum sourced from Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) to eliminate some licensing needs
• AWS-managed integration with Spectrum Access System (SAS) for FCC regulatory compliance
• Delivers and manages 5G Core, RAN software, and SIM cards on an ongoing basis for private 5G users
• Flexible policy management with AWS IAM integration
• Built-in network monitoring for metrics, like network status, connected SIMs, user uplink and downlink usage, and device behaviors

Geoverse

Geoverse is a smaller enterprise 5G provider, but they have built a strong reputation and global presence. Their partner network is extensive and connects them with major 5G providers, like Ericsson and Nokia. However, their support offerings are one of their major differentiators, with ongoing user training, software support, and maintenance built into enterprise licenses.

Geoverse’s business model is a monthly subscription bundle that includes design, deployment, operations, and services for enterprise customers. The 5G services vendor also offers service level agreements (SLAs) to make self-service tool evaluation and network performance simpler.

Differentiators

• Technology partnerships with Ericsson, Nokia, Commscope, JMA, and Corning
• Pre-designed and vetted solution bundles that include smartphones, gateways, and bridges
• Extensive channel and solution partner network
• Turnkey equipment and installation with scalability for wide area networks (WANs)
• Support for CBRS spectrum, major carrier spectrum, and their own 600 MHz and 700 MHz spectrum options

T-Mobile

T-Mobile is considered a top provider of public 5G service, with more coverage areas in the United States than any other provider, but they’ve also worked hard to build a strong enterprise 5G foundation. 

T-Mobile is known for its high signal and download speeds, and they are growing a reputation for a top enterprise user experience. Their device setup and included features make their devices particularly user-friendly, including for video streaming.

At this time, T-Mobile is more heavily focused on its public 5G expansion and optimization goals. However, the company’s highly publicized 2020 merger with Sprint has led T-Mobile to quicker growth trajectories in enterprise 5G innovation. Expect to see a growing number of enterprise use cases from T-Mobile in the near future.

Differentiators

• Enterprise solutions focused on higher education, health care, retail, construction, manufacturing, and transportation and logistics
• Enhanced rural and indoor coverage with extended range and low-band 5G signals
• 5G devices from Apple, Samsung, Google, T-Mobile, OnePlus, Nokia, Motorola, and TCL
• Low-, mid-, and high-band spectrum options
• Business package solutions with unlimited data, talk, text, and video streaming

Learn more in our T-Mobile Enterprise 5G Review.

Enterprise 5G: vendor comparison table

	Edge computing features	5G mobile device procurement and management	Broad partner and third-party support
AT&T	X	X	X
Ericsson	X		X
Nokia	X		X
Verizon	X	X
AWS	X
Geoverse	X	X	X
T-Mobile	X	X

Also read: Top UEM Software

What to look for in an enterprise 5G network

Enterprise 5G networks are difficult to implement from a cost and time perspective. And as this market grows, potential buyers are having a more difficult time deciding which enterprise 5G providers understand and meet their business use cases.

Especially because 5G is still in its early stages, chances are companies won’t have many in-house experts on 5G deployment and management. The lack of in-house knowledge of 5G makes it important for enterprises to find a 5G provider that offers a user-friendly deployment process, along with strong consulting and customer support.

Another consideration for enterprises is the strength of a provider’s enterprise 5G solutions vs. their public 5G outlook. A vendor with top public 5G coverage or speed may not have private 5G solutions that are keeping up with competitors. Before selecting an enterprise 5G provider, look closely at enterprise and industry-specific case studies to get a better understanding of how they’ll be able to meet your networking requirements.

And finally, make sure you check the availability of different providers in your company’s primary global regions. Some enterprise 5G network providers, such as Huawei and ZTE, are highly praised in certain global regions but are not available in others because of security and governmental concerns.

Read next: The Enterprise 5G Market

Considering how essential the internet is for enterprises, 5G can allow large organizations to process more data across the cloud faster and enable technical innovation and new use cases.

See below to learn all about the global enterprise 5G market:

See more: The Private 5G Market

Enterprise 5G market

The 5G technology market was estimated at $9.6 billion in 2022. With a projected 71.9% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2022-2028, it’s expected to be worth $248.4 billion by the end of the period.

Several regions are driving growth in the 5G tech market:

• The Asia-Pacific market is the largest with a 56% market share
• Europe’s market was valued at $359.3 million in 2019 and is projected to maintain an 85.1% CAGR to reach $42.7 billion by 2027
• Sweden exhibits the largest market growth in 5G with a CAGR of 101.2% during 2020-2027
• North America is the second-largest regional market

By industry, the IT and telecommunications industries in 2021 are the largest drivers of the 5G market, with over 20% market share. Other industries driving 5G tech include:

• Automotive
• Transportation
• Health care
• Manufacturing

Enterprise 5G features

5G internet supports the transmission of large data streams in real-time, making it ideal for device-to-device communication

In an enterprise setting, 5G architecture depends on how it’s deployed in tandem with other wireless and network technologies.

Private 5G

Private 5G networks operate the same as a local area network (LAN), with its own dedicated infrastructure and bandwidth.

This allows enterprises to bring custom-made 5G to a large area, indoors or outdoors, which can be used either by guests or only by the company’s employees and authorized personnel.

5G Edge

Since Internet of Things (IoT) networks and edge computing tend to have specific demands for connection speeds and bandwidth, 5G’s low-power requirements and low latency mean it can be integrated directly into edge networks and devices.

5G SD-WAN

Combining 5G with software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) allows for a wider range of connections. A single system can be used to connect 5G to multiple office networks and remote employees in their homes.

It can also support 3G and 4G adaptation, allowing a continuous switch between the three, depending on the network’s availability and user demands.

Benefits of enterprise 5G

As the latest evolution of network, Wi-Fi, and internet technology, enterprises can make the most of 5G to build and improve on their current system and network needs.

Some 5G benefits for enterprises include:

• Higher speeds and lower latency
• Power efficient
• Highly secure traffic
• Improved reliability
• Versatile network capabilities
• Network slicing and scaling

“5G will ultimately provide better connectivity and much clearer video communications, but the real difference comes from 5G’s network splicing capabilities, which can be a game-changer for today’s hybrid and remote workforce,” says Craig Walker, the founder and CEO of Dialpad in a post at Forbes.

“Imagine being able to set your video-calling app as a priority, so that no matter what else is putting stress on your network, you’ll never lose connection during your big presentation.”

See more: AT&T vs. Verizon: Enterprise Mobile Comparison

Enterprise 5G use cases

Organizations of all industries and sizes are using 5G networks to better run their operations and drive business growth:

Optus Stadium

Optus Stadium is set in west Australia and hosts sporting and musical events. With a venue seating 60,000 visitors, it was voted Australia’s best stadium in 2021.

Looking to provide its visitors with the best experience, Optus wanted to launch its own 5G service, allowing access to fast internet at speeds of 1 Gbps.

Working with Nokia, Optus Stadium was able to achieve this goal and grow from 4G to 5G internet. It now allows greater connectivity and edge computing for high-quality video access.

“5G will be transformative in the home, at work, and when we are at play, like cheering on your team or singing along to your favorite artist,” says Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, CEO, Optus Network Australia.

“We know people have been eager to get back into Optus Stadium with a full crowd and with Optus 5G now enabled throughout the stadium, fans will be able to connect at the speed of their excitement.”

Royal Dutch Shell

Royal Dutch Shell is one of the world’s largest companies trading in petroleum, crude oil and natural gas exploration, production, and marketing. It’s available in more than 90 countries, delivering energy needs to power plants.

Looking to improve mobility and connectivity for its thousands of employees and internal network users, Shell sought the help of T-Mobile to implement 5G for its internal and IoT networks.

“Using IoT and the 5G demos T-Mobile shared in its tech expertise as an example, they’ve really opened up to us, sharing their point of view and vision for how we can continue to drive value and where opportunities will lie in the future,” says Alan Prewitt, IT project manager, Royal Dutch Shell.

Enterprise 5G providers

Some of the leading providers of 5G services for enterprises include:

• Verizon
• Vodafone
• T-Mobile
• Qualcomm
• Huawei
• AT&T
• Nokia
• ZTE
• Samsung
• Ericsson

See more: The Top UEM Software

The deal is intended to accelerate IBM’s hybrid cloud consulting business by adding “critical skills” to help communications service providers (CSPs) and media companies modernize on multicloud platforms, according to IBM this month.

IBM believes Sentaca’s domain expertise, assets, and client relationships will help it meet CSP market demand and “strengthen its position” as a systems integrator in the emerging network and 5G markets. 

The deal closed on January 31. Financial details were not disclosed.

See more: The Cloud Computing Market

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Sentaca, founded in 2008, also has an office in Toronto, according to its website.

Sentaca supports digital transformation, next-generation networks and improved customer experience (CX) for CSPs and media companies. For instance, the firm’s technology consultants build and migrate mission-critical applications on leading cloud service providers and open-source platforms, like Red Hat OpenShift and OpenStack. 

Sentaca will join IBM Consulting’s Hybrid Cloud Services business to help solve clients’ strategic and technology challenges, such as cost of ownership, monetization, scalable and secure architecture, as well as “address opportunities,” including 5G, the Internet of Things (IoT), and streaming, that can “accelerate the creation and delivery of new services.” 

Over 140 telcos are served by IBM, including through its subsidiary Red Hat. IBM helps co-create solutions for telcos, while supporting them on their network transformation journeys and enabling new revenue streams that “deliver value to consumer and enterprise clients.”

See more: Top Hybrid Cloud Trends

“Our goal is to help modern networks thrive in an open, hybrid cloud environment that will bring edge and 5G to life for enterprises and consumers,” said John Granger, SVP, IBM Consulting. 

“The proliferation of mobile devices, wireless connectivity, and new media platforms is driving convergence among telco, media, and entertainment.”

Phil O’Neill, CEO of Sentaca, said his firm is “excited to join the IBM team.”

O’Neill said the deal will give the firm access to resources and platforms to “deliver on even larger and more ambitious enterprise cloud transformation projects within the telco and media industry sector.”

IBM’s cloud acquisition spree

IBM’s acquisition of Sentaca is its latest in a string of over 20 acquisitions, inducing 10 in consulting, since Arvind Krishna became CEO in April 2020. The acquisitions are intended to “bolster” IBM’s hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities 

For instance, IBM acquired several cloud consulting firms in 2021, Nordcloud, Taos, BoxBoat and SXiQ, which expanded its multicloud transformation and management capabilities in North America and Europe.

See more: Top Cloud Service Providers

The Cisco Catalyst Industrial Ethernet 9300 was developed to connect and secure the growing number of industrial devices, according to Cisco this month. 

The switch integrates enterprise functionality with industrial protocols in a form factor built for rugged industrial spaces, as a unified solution for IT/OT to “ensure business success.”

See more: The Networking Market

The Catalyst IE9300 supports critical infrastructure, like utilities, oil and gas, roadways, and rail. 

It is an expansion of the Cisco Catalyst 9000 portfolio, based on the Unified Access Data Plane (UADP) ASIC silicon.

The Catalyst IE9300 features advanced visibility, security and edge compute. It is based on the Cisco IOS-XE Operating System and managed by Cisco DNA Center. The switch provides security through the Cisco Identity Services Engine, enabling clients to use their IT knowledge and investments to modernize and secure their industrial and outdoor networks.

Other Catalyst IE9300 Switch Features

• Performance at scale: Enhanced network scalability and reliability with features such as the ability to stack up to eight switches and manage them as one, zero packet loss failure recovery, and high precision time synchronization. 
• Visibility to assets and applications: Improve efficiencies by identifying connected endpoints for asset inventory, automatically enforcing QoS policies via application traffic recognition, and proactively detecting and resolving issues with network health monitoring.
• Enterprise-to-edge, industry-leading cybersecurity: Assess and strengthen the security posture of connected industrial assets and enable zero-trust security with the embedded Cisco Cyber Vision sensor and SD-Access fabric edge capability. 

See more: Top Networking Trends & Developments

“Our customers are taking on massive challenges, like transitioning to cleaner power sources and enhancing electric grid reliability, and the critical nature of these environments demands a network infrastructure with enterprise-grade security, visibility, and automation for scale,” said Vikas Butaney, VP/GM of Cisco IoT. 

“We’re empowering our customers to modernize their large-scale industrial environments and build an agile network, while protecting their assets from cyber threats.”

Adam Nathan, utility and energy industry practice manager at WWT, said to “truly modernize the power grid, utilities need to ensure their substations are efficient and resilient.”

The Catalyst IE9300 switch “empowers utilities to accelerate substation modernization with the agile connectivity needed to power a high-demand future,” Nathan said.

See more: Top 10 Enterprise Networking Companies