Three companies \u2014 Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc \u2014 quietly dominate the world of cloud computing.<\/p>\n
With more more than 100 giant data centers worldwide, they rent out computing power to all manner of customers, making billions of dollars along the way.<\/p>\n
In fact, cloud computing has done more to fuel Amazon\u2019s earnings in recent years than its e-commerce business.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s a threat looming on the horizon, quite literally at the edge of the network. With so many mobile devices and sensors now connected to the internet \u2014 and relying on artificial intelligence \u2014 more people and companies need their computing power close to them.<\/p>\n
For everything from fast analysis of road conditions to streaming holographic concerts, remote data centers are just too far away.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s going to hand a huge opportunity to wireless carriers, which are building fast 5G networks to handle the task. And create a threat for the dominant cloud-computing players, according to telecom analyst Chetan Sharma.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver time, cloud will be primarily used for storage and running longer computational models, while most of the processing of data and AI inference will take place at the edge,\u201d said Sharma, who just wrote a report on the topic sponsored by software provider AlefEdge Inc.<\/p>\n
He pegs the size of this so-called edge-computing market at more than $4 trillion by 2030.<\/p>\n
The Leading Edge<\/strong><\/p>\n Wireless carriers and the owners of cell towers have a big advantage in the edge-computing race: Not only do they control access to high-speed telecommunications networks, they have valuable real estate, such as tens of thousands of cell sites all over the country.<\/p>\n Cloud computing isn\u2019t going away by any means. But there\u2019s more pressure on the industry\u2019s Big Three to team up with wireless carriers, so they\u2019re not left out of the burgeoning edge market.<\/p>\n \u201cThe big players realize that at a minimum they need to partner up with operators to get access to their real-estate property,\u201d Sharma said.<\/p>\n Already, AT&T Inc \u2014 the second-largest US wireless carrier \u2014 has joined forces with Microsoft Corp and IBM Corp, two cloud providers.<\/p>\n \u201cOur goal is that our partners are wildly successful,\u201d said Sam George, a cloud executive at Microsoft. \u201cIf our partners are wildly successful, we\u2019ll be wildly successful. There\u2019s a lot of money to be made for partners.\u201d<\/p>\n Amazon and Google declined to comment on their plans.<\/p>\n AT&T has hundreds of workers focused on edge computing, and it\u2019s \u201ca core part of our 5G strategy,\u201d said Mo Katibeh, chief marketing officer of AT&T\u2019s business division.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is one that takes a village.\u201d<\/p>\n IBM, meanwhile, is also working with carrier Vodafone Group Plc in Europe.<\/p>\n \u201cThe networks are essentially themselves becoming a cloud,\u201d said Steve Canepa, IBM\u2019s global managing director for the telecom industry.<\/p>\n \u201cThe telcos today have a point of presence at the edge, and that becomes a great place to have an extension of the platform.\u201d<\/p>\n Cloud providers in China \u2014 such as Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd and Tencent Holdings Ltd \u2014 invested in carrier China Unicom two years ago. And more such investments and partnerships could be coming, Sharma said.<\/p>\n For other tech companies, including chipmakers like Intel Corp., the hope is the shift leads to a bigger opportunity for everyone.<\/p>\n \u201cWe see a rapid convergence between the cloud providers and connectivity providers,\u201d said Caroline Chan, a general manager at Intel. \u201cIn our view, it\u2019s a bigger pie.\u201d<\/p>\n Other telecom players are angling to team up with both carriers and cloud providers.<\/p>\n Crown Castle International Corp, which owns fiber lines as well as more than 40,000 cell towers in the US, is in talks with the two camps, said Paul Reddick, a vice president at the company.<\/p>\n Crown Castle also is an investor in startup Vapor IO, which is deploying edge computing this year in six metro areas, including Chicago.<\/p>\n \u201cI would say this is one that takes a village,\u201d Reddick said.<\/p>\n Other projects are already well underway. At CenturyLink Inc., about 100 facilities that used to store telecom equipment are now outfitted with servers. And it\u2019s making them available to corporate customers in sectors like retail and industrial robotics.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve already sold these facilities to a number of customers that need to get that compute closer to the network edge,\u201d said Paul Savill, a senior vice president at CenturyLink.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve seen enough activity in this space that we can confidently build out this infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n
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