Highlights from the Annual Frost & Sullivan Global IT and Business Decision-makers Survey
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.
Table of Contents
Research Objectives and Methodology
Respondent Profile
Decision-makers and Objectives
IT Department and Line of Business Officers Drive Decisions
Revenue Growth and CX Improvement are the Top Business Objectives
MEC Growth Opportunity Analysis
Infrastructure Requirements on Private Networks with IoT
Latency Requirements
Current Status of MEC Implementation
Uses Cases Deployed in MEC Solutions
Benefits of MEC Implementation
MEC Challenges
Geographically Dispersed Assets and Number of Locations Required for Edge Computing
Use of Software-defined Wide Area Networking SD-WAN and Data Processing and Storage at the Edge
Preference for Edge Hardware Vendors in Procurements
Spending on Private Networks and MEC Solutions
Analysis by Sector
MEC Hardware as an Infrastructure Requirement by Sector
Latency Requirements by Sector
Current Status of MEC Implementation by Sector
MEC Challenges by Sector
Geographically Dispersed Assets by Sector
Use of SD-WAN by Sector
Analysis by Region
MEC Hardware as an Infrastructure Requirement by Region
Latency Requirements by Region
Current Status of MEC Implementation by Region
MEC Challenges by Region
Geographically Dispersed Assets by Region
Use of SD-WAN by Region
Analysis by Company Size
MEC Hardware as an Infrastructure Requirement by Company Size
Latency Requirements by Company Size
Current Status of MEC Implementation by Company Size
MEC Challenges by Company Size
Use of SD-WAN by Company Size
The Last Word
Key Findings
Appendix
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