Top 5 Trends in Managed Edge and Content Delivery Services, 2026

This IDC Perspective anticipates key trends in the managed edge and content delivery services market in 2026. These include the expansion of inference at the edge, the continued effort to commercialize NaaS, the focus on compelling industry-edge use cases, the impact of live streaming on video delivery, and the role of observability to deliver better customer experience. 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, the growth of live streaming events, and enterprise demand for better reporting. These trends are driven by macroeconomic forces, such as the adoption of cloud services, the emergence of agentic AI, global ecommerce growth, and security concerns."Enterprise decision-makers are expecting flexibility, high availability, cost-effective network consumption modes, low latency, and digital experiences enhanced with self-service and real-time observability. Key trends such as inference at the edge, NaaS, and observability are key to addressing these demands. Agentic AI provides a foundational platform to accelerate these trends. In addition, live streaming events have the potential to transform the video delivery landscape toward higher-value services," says Ghassan Abdo, research VP, Worldwide Telecom at IDC.