Top 5 Trends in Managed Edge Content Delivery Services in 2025

This IDC Perspective anticipates key trends in the managed edge and content delivery services market in 2025. These include the emergence of inference at the edge, the pivot toward a unified SASE platform as a service, the focus on compelling industry edge use cases, the impact of AI on traffic, and ensuring that observability aligns with end-user expectations. These trends are driven by the need to simplify networking and security onboarding and operations, the demand for low-latency edge services, the emergence of GenAI as a key tool to improve operations and customer experience, and enterprise demand for better reporting. These trends are driven by macroeconomic forces such as the adoption of cloud services, global ecommerce growth, and security concerns."2025 will be a pivotal year for enterprises and service providers. Decision-makers must navigate trends related to the adoption of GenAI, its impact on traffic, and edge investment. They need to incorporate a uniform SASE platform as part of network transformation and assess the role that observability can play to enhance operations and drive improved customer experience," says Ghassan Abdo, research VP, Worldwide Telecom at IDC."2025 will be transformative for edge services, with GenAI, unified SASE platforms, and enhanced observability driving efficiency and customer experience. Navigating the pivotal trends of 2025, GenAI, edge investments, and the critical role of observability in network transformation will be critical for organizations," says Jitesh Bhayani, research VP, Worldwide Telecom at IDC.