Edge Applications Estimated to Represent 50 Percent of Market by 2026

“Data center IT and telecom network infrastructure have been converging in recent years. Service providers have been replacing dedicated devices with unique hardware architectures in the mobile core network with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware to virtualize various network functions,” said Baron Fung, Research Director at Dell’Oro Group. “Network function virtualization has the potential to reduce capex through the use of less expensive and commoditized COTS hardware, instead of dedicated or proprietary hardware for network services. Furthermore, a new class of latency-sensitive applications in the form of multi-access edge computing (MEC), and virtualization of the baseband functions in the radio access networks in the form of Open RAN, will pave the way for the explosive growth of a new class of servers located at the network edge,” explained Fung.

Additional highlights from the new Telecom Server market Advanced Research Report:

Edge use cases for Broadband Access, MEC, and RAN— still in the nascent stage, are expected to exceed 50 percent CAGR in server revenue over our forecast horizon.
Server form factors and vendor ecosystem will require further development prior to mainstream adoption.
Select telecom workloads are likely to migrate to the public cloud.