Security is the top barrier to edge deployment, according to around 23% of enterprise respondents planning to adopt or are currently adopting edge technology, based on Forrester’s The State of Edge Computing 2024.
Other key factors include the cost of edge devices (22%), the time required to move data from the edge to central data repositories and applications (21%), and the lack of IT organisational remit to operate at the edge (21%).
Use cases
Despite security issues and other concerns on edge computing, enterprise infrastructure hardware decision-makers use edge computing (horizontal use) in employee health and safety (76%), security and surveillance (74%), environmental monitoring use cases (71%) and smart office or building (68%).
Functional use cases of edge computing include quality assurance (75%), environmental monitoring (71%), and supply chain (70%).
“Firms should start their edge journey by identifying critical edge use cases relevant to their organisation including such industry-specific scenarios as e-commerce in retail, predictive maintenance in manufacturing, and wearable devices in healthcare. In addition, every new network connection, smart device, edge server, or micro data center is an attack surface for hackers, so it is critical to address network, application, and device security issues up front,” said Forrester principal analyst Michele Pelino.
