IDC: companies around the world are on pace to spend $240.6B on edge computing through 2024, at a compound annual growth rate of more than 15%
Firms world-wide on pace to spend $240.6 billion on edge computing through 2024 — Companies are expected to raise spending over the next few years … Tweets: @rhatr , @chrismattmann , @alstom , @edgeimpulse , and @paulmiller Tweets: Roman V Shaposhnik / @rhatr : Kind of humbling and mind boggling to be a market leader in the market this big https://www.wsj.com/... Who knows — maybe @ZededaEdge will actually surpass @cloudera and @Pivotal re: the amount of value we create. That'd be quite something honestly! Chris Mattmann / @chrismattmann : Red Hat last week launched an edge-computing platform designed to operate across multiple cloud services https://www.wsj.com/... @alstom : .@WSJ has featured us in an article discussing edge #computing, which mentions how we've recently installed #edge tools developed by @RedHat in wayside devices alongside tracks, including #railway grade crossings. Read the full article here: https://www.wsj.com/... Edge Impulse / @edgeimpulse : “Like the cloud before it, edge is fueling the next wave of innovation, enabling organizations to automate operations, create rich customer experiences, and bring new products and services to market.” - @BusinessofDave https://www.wsj.com/... Paul Miller / @paulmiller : Companies extend cloud to the edge, writes @angusloten https://www.wsj.com/... via @WSJ . Yes, but important to remember it's not cloud OR edge, but cloud AND edge. @Forrester clients, see my https://www.forrester.com/... , for example...
Context & Ripple Effects
IDC's forecast lands amid a running corpus debate over where compute money actually goes: RBC tracked 19 cloud operators' $63.8B of 2017 capex, and by 2020 the spend had concentrated hard — Amazon alone grew capex 69% YoY per the Platformonomics capex analysis while Google's declined. Edge computing is the counter-current: a $240.6B pool through 2024 that is not owned by any hyperscaler yet.
The reaction in the corpus shows why the number matters. ZededaEdge's Roman Shaposhnik framed it as a chance for an edge specialist to rival what Pivotal and Cloudera built, and Red Hat launched an edge-computing platform within days of the WSJ piece — incumbents and startups alike reading the same forecast.
First-order effects
- Red Hat and edge specialists like ZededaEdge are moving immediately to claim the forecasted $240.6B pool, treating a market-leader position there as attainable in a way it never was against AWS on its own turf.
- Hyperscalers whose capex already dwarfs everyone else's — Amazon at $54B in 2020 — now face a spending wave that flows partly around their datacenters rather than through them.
Second-order effects
- The forecast strengthens the repatriation case: Andreessen Horowitz's analysis of 50 public software companies found workload repatriation could cut cloud spend by 50%, and credible edge economics give buyers a destination for those workloads instead of just a reason to leave.
- IBM and Oracle, which Platformonomics showed running tens of billions behind in cloud CAPEX, get a second entry point — edge is early enough that the gap is measured in positioning rather than installed base.
Third-order effects
- If edge spend compounds above 15% while cloud capex stays concentrated in three or four balance sheets, compute infrastructure bifurcates into a hyperscale core and a fragmented edge layer, with vendor lock-in forming at the edge before it has fully set in the core.
- The pattern points toward capital discipline pressure on pure public-cloud economics: boards will increasingly ask why a workload needs a hyperscaler at all when edge alternatives carry their own cost curve.
The trend: Compute spending is beginning to reallocate from a handful of hyperscale clouds toward distributed edge infrastructure, with forecasts like IDC's acting as the signal that draws platform vendors in.