Webinar Takeaways: Edge Computing - Industry Vertical Viewpoints
A sub-set of 3GPP Market Representation Partners hosted a 2-part webinar series in April 2021 looking at edge computing for industry verticals and on-going standardisation work in 3GPP. The first webinar brought together experts from the 5G Automotive Association (5GAA), the 5G Alliance for Connected Industry and Automation (5G-ACIA), Edge Gallery, ETSI Multi-access edge computing (MEC) and the Automotive Edge Computing Consortium (AECC) to highlight opportunities and updates on how diverse market sectors can benefit from offloading data at the edge of the network. Further insights came from interactive discussions and polling with participants.
The webinar was co-chaired by Dr David Lund, President of Public Safety Communication Europe (PSCE) and Stephanie Parker, Trust-IT and Vice-chair of the 5G-IA Pre-Standardization WG with the support of John Favaro, Trust-IT and member of the 5G PPP Automotive Working Group.
The webinar was attended by a mix of organisations from both verticals and the telecommunication industry, helping to share a common understanding on edge computing.
Presentations, takeaways and poll findings are published here in our summary report.
Edge Computing around the World: Vertical Industry Viewpoints - Professional Profiles of Panellists
- Leonardo Gomes Baltar, intel (Germany) and WG 1 Vice-Chair, Enabling Edge Computing to support Cellular-V2X Use Cases
- Gabriel YuYang, Technical Steering Committee Chair at EdgeGallery (China), EdgeGallery 5G Open Source and its Application in IIoT
- Nurit Sprecher, Nokia and ETSI MEC Founding Chair (multi-access edge computing), A common and extensible application enabling platform for new business opportunities
- Samita Chakrabati, Verizon Technical Lead at 5G-ACIA, Applicability of 5G Industrial Edge Computing at 5G ACIA
- Said Tabet, Chief Architect, Intelligent Connected Vehicles, Technology Lead IoT at Dell Technologies, Board Member AECC, Driving Data to the Edge
Interactive panel discussion: Market Rollout and Network Compliance: The interactive dicussions highlighted the importance of greater cooperation on edge computing globally to help drive better understanding of its importance for 5G market rollout across companies and consumers.
Main takeaways
- The webinar was an excellent deep-dive into the edge computing landscape highlighting on-going work in automotive, manufacturing and the Industrial Internet of Things, as well as standardisation work in ETSI and open-source approaches.
- It illustrated the value of edge computing with strong signs coming from industry in terms of growing interest and adoption roadmaps. There is an impressive number of initiatives across the globe embracing edge computing, with examples of cooperation globally as seen in 5GAA, 5G-ACIA, AECC and ETSI MEC.
- Industrial automation, digital twins and infrastructure control among the main drivers for growing demand.
- Collaboration on edge computing is essential and will become even more important as applications increasingly move to the edge. Continued discussions are needed to have greater clarity at multiple layers: business and technology, SW and HW. Collaboration can also support efforts to educate consumers and businesses, both key to uptake and achieving network compliant rollout.
- The collaboration underpinning the 3GPP MRP webinar series is an excellent example of how we can intensify joint efforts across the ecosystem working towards convergence and ensuring RoI, e.g. for telecom investments.
Poll Findings - Participant viewpoints
Where would you position your organisation in terms of implementing edge computing?
Only 16% of respondents already have a commercial strategy in place for edge computing while 26% are starting to develop one. Therefore 42% are expected to have one in short term. 30% are at early learning stage to understand market opportunities and 28% are exploring its potential.
In which verticals do you expect the first implementations other than automotive?
The automotive sector is an early mover in edge computing, as testified by 5GAA and AECC presentations in the webinar with both having published studies and white papers. 5GAA is planning trials in 2021 in various locations globally so another webinar on this topic in 2022 would be helpful. After automotive, manufacturing is expected to be the next sector to implement edge, as testified by the 5G-ACIA presentation. All three associations are market representation partners of 3GPP, with 5GAA also contributing to standardisation work. In the 5G PPP, 5GCroCo (cross-border automotive use cases) has contributed to standardisation activities of both 5GAA and AECC. Gaming, AR/VR and media is the next sector expected to adopt edge computing.
What are your top 2 priority requirements for edge computing?
Low latency is the top requirement for most respondents (33%) followed by interoperability and service continuity (both on 20.5%) with transferring and processing large volumes of data and very high reliability in joint third place (both on 12.8%). It' will be important to see how many of these requirements feature in early deployments as not all of them will be there at first rollout. The poll also shows how requirements combine together, e.g. 2 priority requirements: Low latency + very high reliability; Interoperability + Service continuity; Interoperability + Low latency; 3 requirements: Interoperability + Service continuity + Transferring and processing large volumes of data and 4 requirements: Interoperability + Service continuity + Low latency + Transferring and processing large volumes of data.
Webinar contributors and supporters
This webinar is part of a webinar and workshop series designed for industry verticals co-hosted by 5G-IA, 5GAA, 5G-ACIA and PSCE as Market Representation Partners of 3GPP.
The 3GPP MRPs take great pride in cooperating with a broad spectrum of 5G stakeholders and like-minded associations across the globe. An overview of contributors and supporters can be found at Webinar hosts and support organisations
Webinar Part 2
The online webinar report for part 2 on 3GPP Standards on Edge Computing is available here.
