78% of Industrial Edge Deployments Now Past Pilot Stage, Omdia Survey Finds

Industrial Edge Computing Exits the Pilot Phase

Seventy-eight percent of organizations with industrial edge deployments have moved beyond pilot projects, according to an Omdia survey of 570 IoT decision-makers across 10 countries. Of those deployments, 53% had reached moderate-to-extensive scale across business units or the wider enterprise. Eighty-seven percent reported that deployments were meeting or exceeding expectations.

The survey found that 62% of organizations had adopted edge architectures, with 42% identifying edge processing as their top technology investment priority. The data signals a shift from proof-of-concept spending to operational infrastructure: device identity management, remote patching, network segmentation, and integration with manufacturing execution systems, SCADA, ERP, and cloud platforms.

Security Replaces Hardware as the Primary Obstacle

Thirty-one percent of respondents identified security as the most frequent obstacle to edge deployment. This percentage matters because it reframes the purchasing decision. The competitive issue is no longer whether edge analytics works—78% of deployments have proven that—but whether vendors can offer secure fleet management, OT integration, and lifecycle support at scale.

This strengthens the position of industrial-edge platforms from Microsoft Azure IoT with Azure Stack Edge, AWS IoT Greengrass and Snowball, Siemens Industrial Edge, Schneider Electric EcoStruxure, and Cisco's edge portfolio. Buyers should budget more for platform operations and less for isolated proof-of-concept hardware. Security architecture—specifically credential management, segmentation, and observability—is likely to be the gating factor in larger deployments, not raw compute capacity.

New Hardware Targets Compact, Connected Edge Systems

Premio announced the CT-DAS02, a 146 × 102 mm industrial motherboard built on Intel's four-core Processor N97, with support for up to 16 GB of DDR5-4800 memory and dual Intel i226V 2.5GbE ports. The board includes three independent display outputs, M.2 NVMe expansion, Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, 4G/5G support, dual Nano-SIM sockets, RS-232/422/485 interfaces, and 8-bit GPIO.

The CT-DAS02 competes with industrial single-board computers and gateways from Advantech, AAEON, OnLogic, Kontron, ASRock Industrial, and IEI. Its differentiation is I/O density and cellular-ready connectivity in a small form factor, not benchmark-leading AI performance. It could reduce custom engineering for OEMs and system integrators building HMIs, gateways, transportation equipment, and machine-monitoring systems where projects require dual Ethernet, legacy serial interfaces, cellular failover, and multiple displays.

Premio did not publish pricing, availability dates, power consumption, thermal limits, or performance benchmarks, so buyers cannot yet calculate total cost of ownership or compare it quantitatively with competing gateways.

Market Forecasts Point to Expanding Budget Envelope

The industrial-edge market is projected to grow from $17.94 billion in 2025 to $39.64 billion by 2030, representing a 17.1% CAGR from 2026 to 2030. The forecast places industrial edge at the intersection of automation suppliers such as Siemens, Schneider Electric, and Rockwell Automation; cloud providers such as AWS, Microsoft, and Google; networking vendors such as Cisco; and industrial-computing specialists such as Advantech and Kontron.

The projected growth supports continued enterprise spending on distributed compute for predictive maintenance, machine vision, real-time monitoring, and localized control. It also suggests that buyers should avoid architectures tied to a single hardware vendor where possible. Standard containers, open industrial protocols, remote device management, and portable data pipelines can reduce switching costs as the market consolidates.

A separate forecast projects the 5G edge-computing market to grow from $20.6 billion in 2026 to $130.5 billion in 2031, a 44.7% CAGR. Enterprises should not interpret this growth as proof that 5G edge is the default choice. The purchasing decision should turn on measurable requirements: mobility, coverage, deterministic latency, device density, resilience, and the cost of spectrum, radios, core networking, and managed operations. For fixed factory assets, industrial Ethernet or Wi-Fi may remain less expensive. 5G becomes more compelling where mobility or difficult cabling materially affects operations.

What to Watch

The transition from pilots to production changes the procurement priority from hardware selection to operational architecture. Enterprises should evaluate vendors on security posture, fleet management capabilities, OT integration depth, and platform lock-in risk. The 31% security obstacle rate indicates that credential management, network segmentation, and remote patching will determine deployment velocity more than compute specifications. Buyers should also prepare for market consolidation by prioritizing portable workloads and open protocols over proprietary stacks.