AWS in 2016 introduced Greengrass, which builds off AWS IoT and AWS Lambda – a "serverless" compute service that enables users to run "stateless" code on servers, so that it isn't attached to any particular infrastructure and will always run when triggered.

AWS' service will allow developers to write Lambda code that can run straight from devices, and is built for offline operation so that IoT data can continue to be processed even when connectivity to the cloud is temporarily unavailable.

"Edge is becoming much more important than I had predicted it would be … there's a continued push from customers to get closer and closer to the edge," said Brian Blanchard, vice president of cloud solutions at 10th Magnitude, a Chicago-based solution provider. "The largest opportunities for the channel is adding data analytics to managed service providers' stack with a data driven approach."

Analytics at the edge has a particularly large role in manufacturing, where mission critical machines may need to process and analyze data in a split second, solution providers told CRN.

Manufacturing vendors focused on operational technology have built up their own strategies around edge technology. GE Digital's Predix software platform, for example, includes a range of integrated technologies at the edge, including Predix Machine for device provisioning, Predix Connectivity, and Predix EdgeManager for management, configuration, and administration of edge devices.

Predix performs two types of data analysis: operational analytics, which analyzes information in real time at the source – like a wind turbine or MRI machine – that detect split-second changes to prevent damage and optimize performance, and historical analytics, which collects and analyzes data over time.

"It is a trend for manufacturing vendors to create these tools at the edge," Jeff Miller, chief technologist of smart manufacturing at Avid Solutions, a Winston-Salem, N.C.-based systems integrator. "Customers are looking for analytics at the edge to help with their [operational technology] applications."