Edge locations are typically close to the operations sites such as a factory floors, retail stores, etc. IT teams need to manage the devices and applications at these remote locations without relying on a local IT expert.

Devices at the edge are subjected to tiny spaces, large temperature gradients, dust, moisture, and physical shock. Maintaining hardware and software complexity for various form factors, network connections, levels of ruggedization, and configurations is a significant challenge for large-scale edge deployments.

Edge initiatives have been pursued via isolated use cases. This has driven the proliferation of technology silos that fail to scale much beyond the initial deployments. This not only makes suboptimal use of IT resources but also makes it difficult to manage these silos with consistency and agility.

As edge devices proliferate across several locations, this increases the cyber-attack surface for rogue agents looking to hack into the consumer and operational data stored by enterprises. This is one of the topmost concerns for IT leaders across industries.

OT workloads at the edge need to support both legacy and next-gen workloads deployed in various forms, such as VMs, containers, and serverless designs. The technology underpinnings must be stable, secure, and highly available to meet the needs of such "edge-native" apps.