The Forrester Wave™: Edge Development Platforms, Q4 2023

Edge Development Platforms Vendor Product Comparisons 2023

Key features and pros and cons of top Edge Development Platforms products:

Cloudflare - Leaders

Pros:

Rich developer-focused feature set with topflight security
Globally distributed network of compute, storage, and programmable security
Industry-leading market presence with more than 1 million developers
Superior vision that positions to take on public cloud hyperscalers
Interoperability with programmable global CDN
Intelligent workload placement deployment model
Ease of onboarding - developers deliver workloads globally in minutes and production applications in a week
Suitable for both performant web experiences and general-purpose workloads

Cons:

Better observability options needed for tracing and logging

Fastly - Leaders

Pros:

Built on global network of compute with one of the faster CDNs in the market
Strong commitment to building developer communities and open-source standards (Wasm and WASI)
Significant uptick in compute requests and customer growth
Wasm runtime for performant, personalized web experiences
Fast, programmable CDN with robust security
Generous egress-free billing model better than public cloud FaaS for data-intensive use cases
Outstanding customer support
Speed of edge network

Cons:

Some growing pains reflected in market presence scores
More stateful use case support would add value

Akamai Technologies - Strong Performers

Pros:

Strong distributed footprint with impressive enterprise-ready global fabric
Significant market presence with thousands of paying customers
Edge solutions within multibillion-dollar revenue stream
Leadership has firm grasp on future of distributed internet
Akamai Connected Cloud offerings include core cloud-native services
Impressive enterprise-ready global fabric of edge locations
Outstanding customer support
Strong support for third-party integrations

Cons:

Developer experience lags behind competitors
Platform requires expertise and experience to truly unlock
Legacy infrastructure and development products hamper positioning in emerging market
Complex to orchestrate third-party integrations

Azion - Strong Performers

Pros:

Removes complexity from enterprise developer experience
Features like live results previews for database modifications
ChatGPT plug-in for code generation, comments, and refactoring
Programmable security and well-stocked marketplace
Interoperability with customer edge infrastructure
Robust set of edge locations
Supports IoT, app modernization, and image/video optimization
Platform flexibility in handling variety of edge use cases
Offline capabilities and low latency

Cons:

Analytics and monitoring need improvement
Particularly challenging in debugging IoT applications

Edgio - Strong Performers

Pros:

Robust edge footprint and enterprise-grade developer tools
Strong DDoS protection
Differentiated local development experience
Heavy emphasis on safe build and release process
Fits well with preexisting software development lifecycle
Emphasis on APIs, developer team workflows, and feature management
Configurability of CDN
Seamless integration with CI/CD tooling and processes

Cons:

Lacks data services including queueing and key value storage
Missing general data storage capabilities
Building full-stack applications requires third-party services
Lack of data services necessitates bringing in other edge providers for some use cases

Netlify - Strong Performers

Pros:

Superior developer onboarding experience
Built-in automations for GitHub repository and production-grade CI/CD pipeline
Leading out-of-the-box automation for enterprise-grade DevOps
Built on Jamstack
Fast performance
Excellent onboarding
Highly simple integrations

Cons:

Blurs edge and cloud - relies on managing centralized public cloud infrastructure on AWS
Edge Functions built on Deno and deployed in public cloud
Performance based on managing deployments in cloud availability zones rather than distributed points of presence
Support for specialized workloads based on third-party interoperability
Enterprise features need improvement, particularly DNS and domain management
Unclear if approach can scale to compete with specialized edge players long-term

Vercel - Strong Performers

Pros:

World-class developer experience for front-end web
Inventor and maintainer of popular Next.js framework
Framework Defined Architecture - framework choices dictate architecture decisions
Painless experience for performant, highly scalable distributed web experiences
Next.js works best on Vercel platform
Great direct support from Vercel experts
Seamless developer experience
Healthy product revenue and hundreds of paying enterprise customers

Cons:

Only applicable to front-end web development
Integration with third-party tools can be highly opinionated
Complexity in managing access tokens and integrating with preexisting CI/CD toolchains
Not suitable for general-purpose or specialized workloads
Only provided one reference customer for evaluation

Yext - Strong Performers

Pros:

Outstanding experience for full-stack serverless web development
Frictionless path to building highly performant web experiences
Straightforward and pleasurable developer experience
Guided UI or CLI-based workflow
Sharp focus on seamless onboarding
Ease of integrations, particularly for dynamic web page content
White-glove service
Excellent community engagement
Differentiating vision and commitment to innovation in web page development

Cons:

Only applicable to web development use cases
Tiered SLA lags many competitors' service guarantees
Missing support for event brokers like Kafka and RabbitMQ
Only provided one reference customer for evaluation

Amazon Web Services - Contenders

Pros:

Strong web workload support with Cloudfront Functions and Lambda@Edge
Large number of compatible services for distributed computing
Extension of AWS public cloud ecosystem
Unified and consolidated cloud development experience

Cons:

Lacks cohesion - not a specialized edge offering
Edge viewed as extension of public cloud, not specialized platform
Programming model and developer experience uneven due to disparate services
Stiffer onboarding process compared to specialized edge platforms
Declined to participate in full Forrester Wave evaluation process

Cox Edge - Contenders

Pros:

ISP with own networking infrastructure for faster last-mile performance
Performance benefits from deploying on their infrastructure vs public cloud
Edge locations and data services
Overall performance
Robust last-mile infrastructure primarily in US

Cons:

DIY approach requires developers to bring own tooling
No embedded IDE
Deployment requires manual steps and configuration
Vast majority of footprint in US with limited global presence
More managed services for workloads needed
GPU support would open additional use cases
Advanced competitors with ISP partnerships could replicate offerings
Still gaining traction in market share

Microsoft - Contenders

Pros:

Extends Azure into customer edge
Unified deployment target for Azure customers
Flexibility to build any Kubernetes application
Can deploy virtually anywhere - on-premises or distributed edge
Popular among platform engineering teams

Cons:

Some assembly required - fundamentally managed Kubernetes service
Inherent complexity of running distributed applications on Kubernetes
Trade-off of flexibility and power for complexity
Managing distributed architecture falls on customer expertise
Very little outside Kubernetes operation is abstracted
Complexity in managing snapshots and autoscaling configuration
Lower customer numbers and product revenue compared to competitors

StackPath - Contenders

Pros:

Only vendor to support VM deployments in edge locations
Enables lift-and-shift use cases at edge
Product parity between VMs and containers
Investments in edge locations provide speed advantage
Favorable pricing vs public cloud for VMs
Platform flexibility and control

Cons:

Product strategy still settling after CDN divestiture
Reliance on Anycast means developers orchestrate intelligent placement in application layer
VM focus is risk as enterprises embrace cloud-native architectures
Not fit for enterprises leaving legacy architectures behind
Only provided one reference customer for evaluation

FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2023?

A: Cloudflare, Fastly

Q: What does "Leader" mean in Forrester Wave terms?

A: Leaders in the Forrester Wave for Edge Development Platforms demonstrate the strongest current offerings and strategies in the market. They provide robust developer experiences with features like seamless onboarding, intelligent workload placement, and comprehensive security. Leaders show superior vision for the future of edge computing, refusing to limit their footprint solely to the edge and positioning themselves to compete with public cloud hyperscalers. They have significant market presence with large developer communities and paying customers, and they excel at reducing the complexity of building and deploying globally distributed applications while supporting both web-focused and general-purpose workloads.

Q: How do I interpret a Forrester Wave?

A: https://www.forrester.com/policies/forrester-wave-methodology/

Report:

Top Vendor Products for Edge Development Platforms in 2023

Edge Development Platforms Vendor Product Comparisons 2023

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FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2023?

Q: What does "Leader" mean in Forrester Wave terms?

Q: How do I interpret a Forrester Wave?

Reference