Frost & Sullivan's annual survey of IT and business decision-makers, now in its 15th year, aims to understand their perceptions, decisions, and purchasing behaviors. In 2024, Frost & Sullivan introduced a new set of questions focused on multi-access edge computing (MEC) to the yearly survey. The survey aims to understand respondents’ evolving organizational priorities and the extent to which technologies help them achieve their business objectives.
The findings provide insights into mobile private network and MEC adoption, including the status of implementation, current and future infrastructure, challenges and needs, investment priorities, use cases, latency requirements, benefits by region, industry, and company size, as well as the choice of IT vendors and cloud providers for MEC hardware procurements.
According to respondents, AI has now surpassed the cloud as the most important aspect of digital transformation. As such, companies continue to build hybrid, multi-cloud, and distributed environments to support AI deployments that meet business goals, such as revenue growth, improved customer experience, and operational efficiency. MEC is a centerpiece for enabling Edge AI in various industries, including manufacturing, mining, oil and gas, and ports and logistics.
The survey results offer enterprises, IT vendors, service providers, cloud providers, and telecom companies a glimpse into the future of the MEC market.
- Research Objectives and Methodology
- Respondent Profile
- Decision-makers and Objectives
- IT Department and Line of Business Officers Drive Decisions
- Revenue Growth and CX Improvement are the Top Business Objectives
- MEC Growth Opportunity Analysis
- Infrastructure Requirements on Private Networks with IoT
- Latency Requirements
- Current Status of MEC Implementation
- Uses Cases Deployed in MEC Solutions
- Benefits of MEC Implementation
- MEC Challenges
- Geographically Dispersed Assets and Number of Locations Required for Edge Computing
- Use of Software-defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) and Data Processing and Storage at the Edge
- Preference for Edge Hardware Vendors in Procurements
- Spending on Private Networks and MEC Solutions
- Analysis by Sector
- MEC Hardware as an Infrastructure Requirement by Sector
- Latency Requirements by Sector
- Current Status of MEC Implementation by Sector
- MEC Challenges by Sector
- Geographically Dispersed Assets by Sector
- Use of SD-WAN by Sector
- Analysis by Region
- MEC Hardware as an Infrastructure Requirement by Region
- Latency Requirements by Region
- Current Status of MEC Implementation by Region
- MEC Challenges by Region
- Geographically Dispersed Assets by Region
- Use of SD-WAN by Region
- Analysis by Company Size
- MEC Hardware as an Infrastructure Requirement by Company Size
- Latency Requirements by Company Size
- Current Status of MEC Implementation by Company Size
- MEC Challenges by Company Size
- Use of SD-WAN by Company Size
- The Last Word
- Key Findings
- Appendix
- Growth Opportunities Fuel the Growth Pipeline Engine™
- Why is it Increasingly Difficult to Grow?
- The Strategic Imperative 8™
- Next Steps
- Benefits and Impacts of Growth Opportunities
- Next Steps
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