Cloud giants march into edge computing and 5G: Edge computing and 5G are two interlinked technologies that are poised to significantly improve the performance of applications (faster speed) and enable the real-time processing of massive amount of data (low latency). To strengthen their developers’ ecosystem in the era of 5G, cloud giants are aggressively forming partnerships with telecom companies to speed up the build-out of worldwide cloud-based edge locations to accelerate the development of edge centric applications. 

• Google Cloud recently announced its customized edge solution Anthos for Telecom and also outlined the company's strategy for the telecom vertical. Partnership with AT&T specifically on edge computing and bringing Amdocs' CSP solution into Google Cloud clearly showed Google's ambition.

• AWS announced its solution, Wavelength, in 2019 re:Invent conference. They are working with Verizon to deliver the edge computing in 2020.

• Microsoft Azure is not too far behind. It partnered up with AT&T, acquired Affirmed Networks to enhance the portfolio, and then announced the Azure Edge Zones (see Chart) to compete with Wavelength and Anthos for Telecom.

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Modern IT Architecture: Applications running on edge locations demand lower latency and reduced bandwidth. Traditional virtual machine (VM) architecture is too cumbersome, as each VM is managed by a hypervisor. New IT architectures, such as containers and serverless computing, have emerged to make application deployment faster and easily automated.

Verticals adoption: Not only are technology companies innovating on 5G and edge compute, traditional industry verticals (healthcare, manufacturing, retail, transportation) are also leveraging the secular trend to improve their operations. For example, auto manufacturer Volkswagen is building a private 5G network and collaborating with AWS to accelerate its smart factory project.