IDC: The total size of China's edge cloud market in the first half of the year was 4.5 billion yuan, up 46.3% year on year

The Zhitong Finance App learned that recently, the International Data Corporation (IDC) recently released the “China Edge Cloud Market Tracking Study, 2023H1”. The report shows that in the first half of 2023, China's edge cloud market totaled RMB 4.50 billion, an increase of 46.3% over the previous year; among them, the market size of edge public cloud services, edge exclusive cloud services, and edge cloud solutions reached RMB 24.3, 7.4, and 1.33 billion yuan respectively. Internet audio and video distribution based on edge resources (including overseas), the extension of 5G private network projects to edge computing and high-end cloud services, small-scale uptake of cloud game instances, and lightweight cloud migration of local users are the core drivers of this market growth.

As the cloud computing service market continues to flourish, Chinese cloud computing users use cloud computing more mature and rationally, and are more closely integrated with business, which is spawning diverse application scenarios and requirements for non-centralized cloud computing. The 2024 IDC Futurescape Global Cloud Computing Top Ten Forecast shows that by 2027, 85% of global G2000 organizations will rely on edge standard services and zero-trust security services provided by cloud service providers and connectivity partners, thereby reducing the burden on IT personnel.

IDC believes that an edge cloud is a service or solution formed by naturally extending a public cloud service or private cloud solution from a few or a single computing node (central node) to an edge node based on business requirements. Typical forms include edge cloud services and edge cloud solutions. According to how resources are used, edge clouds can be divided into different models such as edge public cloud services, edge exclusive cloud services, and user-built edge cloud solutions to cover the usage needs of more users, especially enterprise users. Several forms of public/exclusive services and self-built solutions give customers the possibility to use edge clouds flexibly. In terms of resource types, they cover cloud service provider/IDC service provider edge resources, CDN service provider L1/L2 node resources, operator MEC resources/metropolitan area network computer room resources, and user self-built resources; in terms of usage, they include multi-tenant sharing methods and single user exclusive access methods, taking into account economics and data asset sensitivity; from the network, it covers the Internet (including wired and mobile access), private networks, and local area networks.

According to historical data and market trends in 2023, IDC slightly lowered the long-term market forecast, but the compound annual growth rate of the edge cloud market remained above 35% in 2027. The process of self-built traffic distribution systems for major Internet customers is not over yet. The demand for cloud gaming instances that may be brought about by the normalization of game version distribution, the growing demand for diversified overseas edge cloud resources from overseas customers, and more and more traditional industry customers experimenting with public or exclusive “edge cloud resources” in cloud exploration and practice, jointly established It forms the basis for rapid market growth in the short term.

In the first half of 2023, driven by factors such as Internet audio and video customers building their own traffic distribution systems and service providers increasing the supply of edge resources to local customers, the edge cloud market maintained a rapid growth trend close to the past two years, and became one of the most important growth engines in the entire cloud computing market.

In this period, there have been no major adjustments to the edge cloud product development strategies of major service providers. Various products, including public cloud edge resources, advanced edge cloud services, edge cloud platform software (including private deployment of public edge cloud platforms and extension of IoT platforms to a heavy edge form), are undergoing technical iteration on existing technology routes, but some leading service providers and innovative technology service providers have begun to lay out resources and tools in advance around customer intelligence requirements, and are even compatible with mainstream international solutions and local independent solutions at the same time.

In terms of value exploration, IDC focused on many innovative exploration attempts by service providers and major customers in 2023, including edge AI inference services, edge cloud game examples, edge audio and video storage services, and overseas edge cloud services. Operators are also integrating edge cloud technology stacks, products and services at a deeper level in 5G private network projects to provide customers with richer services and solutions.

Wei Yunfeng, China Industry Cloud Service Research Manager, said that although factors such as the lifting of restrictions after the epidemic, the full resumption of offline commercial activities, and the decline in the online time of end users affected the revenue of some Internet customers, which in turn had a negative impact on the growth of the Internet industry cloud service market in the current period, edge cloud products and services maintained a contrarian and rapid growth trend due to their unique value; in the long run, the diversified value of edge clouds under users' demand to reduce costs, and innovative and intelligent application scenarios that continue to emerge on the edge cloud market will all be in the edge cloud market Long-term sustained, healthy growth injects momentum.