Today, organizations are using 5G and edge technologies to increase employee productivity, enhance existing products and services by making them more connected and intelligent, and automate business processes.

Driven by 5G plans, edge investment is expected to nearly double by 2022. Analysts are bullish on the potential of these new approaches as interest and use cases for edge technologies grow.

For example, Gartner's recent survey of 500 IT leaders found that adoption is on the rise. 5G technology attracted the highest average investment in 2021, with an average planned investment of $465,000. It was followed by IoT at $417,000 and edge technology (AI and computing) at $262,000. Gartner predicts that edge technologies are expected to experience the highest investment growth in 2022, rising 76% to $462,000.

"Organizations are using 5G and edge technologies to improve employee productivity, enhance existing products and services by making them more connected and intelligent, and automate business processes," the analyst firm said.

Other forecasts were equally bullish. IDC predicts that worldwide spending on edge computing will reach $176 billion this year, up 14.8 percent from 2021. Enterprise and service provider spending on hardware, software and services for edge solutions is expected to maintain this growth rate until 2025, when spending will reach nearly $274 billion.

Interestingly, many of these investments are driven by organizations at the highest level. Half of the companies in the Gartner survey said board members are overseeing fringe investments.

Still, supporters have their work to do. For example, another survey of 2,736 IT leaders by Research & Markets found that 50 percent had never heard of digital twins. Nearly 35% of respondents claimed to have never heard of edge computing, while 21% were only slightly aware of it. However, mid-level and enterprise organizations claim to be more familiar with the technology.

5G itself is well known, with 78% of respondents believing that 5G is used or considered for different applications or use cases in their business. Additionally, 57% of respondents said their organization is exploring and considering private wireless for their business.

IDC found that the two use cases that will see the most investment in 2022 are content delivery networks and virtual network functions. Combined, these two use cases will generate nearly $26 billion in spending this year. Overall, service providers will invest more than $38 billion this year to support edge products. For enterprise adopters, edge use cases with the most investment in 2022 include manufacturing operations, production asset management, smart grids, omnichannel operations, public safety and emergency response, freight monitoring, and intelligent transportation systems. The fastest-growing use cases for spending in the 2020-2025 forecast include public infrastructure maintenance, network maintenance, anatomical diagnosis, and AR-assisted surgery.

Across the enterprise end-user industry, discrete and process manufacturing will invest $33.6 billion in edge solutions this year. Retail and professional services spending on edge computing will also exceed $10 billion by 2022, while all 19 industries will experience double-digit spending growth over the five-year forecast period.