For decades, the technology industry has consistently been swinging, pendulum style, from centralized architectures to decentralized settings. Lately, prompted by the need for real-time services and greater security, there has been a mass movement to the edge – to the point that 35% of the average organization’s data estate is now driven by edge workloads.
That’s the word from a recent IDG/Foundry survey of 400 IT managers, commissioned by Insight Enterprises, which finds that the movement to the edge is fundamentally changing the way organizations collect and analyze data.
Close to one-third of organizations, 29%, report that a majority of their data volumes (more than 50%) now reside on the edge. In addition, a majority, 64%, expect that volume to increase in the next 12 months.
Interest in the edge has been growing. At least 36% cite the need to process data from edge devices as a “top IT objective” for delivering analytics, compared to 27% in Insight’s 2021 survey, marking the biggest year-over-year increase in IT priorities.
See also: It’s Time to Decentralize with Edge Analytics
Building functioning artificial intelligence is another top priority for organizations, the survey finds. At this point, just about all, 85%, indicate their organizations are using AI to drive business insights and/or efficiencies. Still, it’s only a work in progress at this point, the survey’s authors point out. Only 36% have optimized their use of AI organization-wide. Another 23% have adopted a strategy, but have yet to mature processes. At least 18% have adopted in various departments, 16% are leveraging AI/ML for proof of concepts.
