Partnership is a funny word in the computing and connectivity industries. It typically is spun as a source of competitive advantage, and that arguably is true when a firm tries to add features and functionality outside its historic core business that are complementary to its core.
Partnerships are often said to be advantageous when a firm wants to move out of its core and into an adjacency where it does not already have domain competence. The strategy often is to build volume and domain expertise to the point where a firm can source product features internally, rather than relying on a partner.
When a firm partners in any area related to its core business, that is probably an indication of weakness, often the result of financial limitations that prevent a firm from developing its own resources.
That arguably is the case for cable operators looking at edge computing. A survey of cable operators by Heavy Reading found 16 percent of respondents planned to build at least some of their own infrastructure. But most respondents indicated their present thinking was to partner with one or more hyperscale computing as a service suppliers to create edge computing businesses.
At this point, as is true for many telcos as well, edge computing as a service is largely viewed as the domain of the hyperscalers, with some exceptions in regions where hyperscaler presence is undeveloped. The reliance on partnerships seems a realistic recognition that the actual computing as a service is outside the connectivity domain, and that hyperscalers have too many advantages to beat.
Instead, in most cases, edge computing is seen as a product that can leverage connectivity provider real estate and connectivity assets, providing incremental revenue growth. There seems little belief that edge computing offers hope of a new role for connectivity providers as branded suppliers of computing as a service.
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