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Besides the turbulent history managed service providers have had with cloud computing over the years, there may be even more of a reason for MSPs to bet less heavily on cloud computing as the future of managed services. The edge.
No, this is no reference to U2's mononymous guitarist. There are some in our industry who believe that edge computing is where all the activity will be, and not in the cloud. Let's take a closer look.
Edge Computing
According to Gartner, 40% of enterprises will have an edge computing strategy in place by 2021, an increase from around 1% in 2017. Hewlett Packard Enterprise says it will invest $4 billion during the next four years to accelerate innovation in what they call “the intelligent edge.”
These two perspectives on edge computing should tell anyone paying attention that connected devices (whether you call it Internet of Things or something else) are going to be an increasingly important "object" to manage in the future.
IoT has been receiving a lot of attention in the last few years, including from MSPAlliance. While I would say IoT is not yet a trend amongst the business community (most IoT discussion seems to be centered around residential usage), devices connected to the Internet are increasing and at some point it is logical to assume that MSPs will be called upon to manage them.