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.

Author: Renato Pasquini