• About Us
  • Partnership Opportunities
  • Privacy Policy

Data Center Frontier

Charting the future of data centers and cloud computing.

  • Cloud
    • Hyperscale
  • Colo
    • Site Selection
    • Interconnection
  • Energy
    • Sustainability
  • Cooling
  • Technology
    • Internet of Things
    • AI & Machine Learning
    • Edge Computing
    • Virtual Reality
    • Autonomous Cars
    • 5G Wireless
    • Satellites
  • Design
    • Servers
    • Storage
    • Network
  • Voices
  • Podcast
  • White Papers
  • Resources
    • COVID-19
    • Events
    • Newsletter
    • Companies
    • Data Center 101
  • Jobs
You are here: Home / Voices of the Industry / Taking Edge Computing Everywhere It Needs To Be

Taking Edge Computing Everywhere It Needs To Be

By Voices of the Industry - May 10, 2021

Taking Edge Computing Everywhere It Needs To Be

Phillip Marangella of EdgeConneX says that the Metaverse may very well revolutionize how people socialize, how they transact business, how they share knowledge and experiences, how they travel, and much, much more. Source: iStock, courtesy of EdgeConneX

LinkedinTwitterFacebookSubscribe
Mail

In this edition of Voices of the Industry, Phillip Marangella, CMO of EdgeConnex, explores how the Edge is everywhere and flexible solutions can support anything from hyperlocal to hyperscale data centers. 

Phillip Marangella, CMO for EdgeConneX

For some people, the Edge is defined as being located in either a Tier 2 or Tier 3 market, or it’s classified as being a small or micro data center. But, in fact, the Edge can really be a data center of any size, located everywhere and anywhere businesses and communities need to be connected to the wider world of communications, content, and cloud-based services. The trick is meeting demand and delivering capacity and connectivity where that demand is reaching critical mass and being able to provide customers a flexible continuum of capacity solutions that can span from hyperlocal to hyperscale data centers.

So, how do we identify underserved markets that are outgrowing their current infrastructure so we can deliver just-in-time solutions that facilitate growth and empower businesses so we can help them contend with the volumes, variety, and velocity of today’s data? We have to start by listening.

There is a temptation to view growth like a road trip, speculatively building data centers at certain points on the map in anticipation of future needs that may or may not materialize, over-building in some areas while neglecting others that might have proven, immediate needs.

But, if we listen carefully, we find that service providers know their markets and they know their own customers, and they can tell us a lot about the optimal timing for introducing services into a new market responsibly. And to a large extent, the goal of a data center solution provider is to help our service provider customers connect with and service their end users. The data center is the enabler, and its location and scale are driven not by dots on a map but by customer demand.

Let’s look at three emerging markets that are seeing a new boost in demand and some recent deployments of new infrastructure in historically underserved communities.

  • Santiago, Chile boasts a metropolitan population of over 7 million people and a fast-growing economy with a higher-than-average per-capita GDP and a financial district commonly called ‘Sanhattan’. But it’s not just business based in Chile that drives demand. Santiago is a global city with Cloud Service Providers (CSP) and network services eager to reach a growing market of sophisticated users demanding faster access to content, cloud, and as-a-service applications for consumers and business.
  • Barcelona, Spain is not typically mentioned in the same breath as the FLAP markets of Europe – Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, and Paris – or even its in-country neighbor Madrid, but it makes a strong case as an important Edge node, both for its strength as a major economic hub and for its position as a gateway to markets in the Mediterranean, southern Europe, and North Africa. Here, too, growing user demand drives capacity and connectivity needs at the Edge, and global service providers see Barcelona as a destination that gives them greater opportunities to expand their services to an important hub in a unique location.
  • Miami, Florida is among the southern-most cities in the U.S. and home to a diverse population, a growing technology, banking, and business hub, and a gateway to Latin America and the Caribbean to the South, and Iberia and the rest of the Europe to the East. And it anchors a nearly 75-mile metropolis along the Atlantic coast with a combined population of over 6 million people.
  • Portland, Oregon and the nearby Hillsboro area has established itself as a magnet for the digital economy, situated between Seattle and Silicon Valley, along the Columbia River, and near the Pacific coast where it is able to support landing station services for undersea cables connecting Asia to North America., Portland has become a critical junction point for cloud, networks, data center capacity, and for emerging technologies. And as a result, Portland is a key Edge market, regionally, nationally, and globally.
  • Chennai, India is home to nearly 8 million people and to booming software, technology, hardware manufacturing, healthcare, film, and finance industries. It’s also a key gateway to the rest of Asia connected by submarine cables. With nearly half of the country’s data center infrastructure deployed in Mumbai, Chennai has long been underserved by data center providers and under-appreciated as an Edge market in today’s global economy. Sometimes referred to as “the Detroit of India”, Chennai is a large metropolitan area, and data center customers are beginning to demand access and capacity to bring new services into this market and help the region’s businesses access markets worldwide.

The message here, though, is not that these seemingly unrelated markets are good candidates for Edge data center capacity simply based on abstract economic or demographic data. The key is that they are great markets because customers, both incumbents in those markets and global service providers eager to serve them, tell us they need infrastructure so they can deliver the highest level of user experience and realize their business goals as they continue to take steps toward digital transformation. They need faster, more reliable, more secure methods of connecting to their own customers in these cities and metro areas, and they can’t wait 18, 24, or 36 months for the infrastructure to be in place. They are agile, and they need their data center providers to be agile, as well.

Every year, the impact of Cloud services, global content consumption, and network connectivity continue to grow and combine to extend the importance of the Edge. But additional Edge demand is seen in deployments of IoT, machine learning, connected cars, AI, and gaming, particularly as they are deployed and embraced in new markets worldwide.

In some cases, markets that looked on paper like they would be triggering phenomenal growth and demand have been superseded by markets that experts and statistics missed, as technology adoption, social changes, and business expansion tips the scales in new directions. And every year, customers in these markets, or looking to enter them, are in a perfect position to know the value of their communities. So, if we listen to those customers, work with them, collaborate with them, it becomes much easier to identify and serve the markets that push the Edge closer to true ubiquity.

The Edge is everywhere. Intelligent planning, coupled with listening and engagement, is what helps bring the resources of the Edge to businesses and services that need them most, because, as important as the major service providers are, at its core the Edge is all about the end-user experience. As our recent e-book on the benefits of a Hybrid Multi-Cloud Strategy at the Edge illustrates, customers of the major service providers are concerned about cost, performance, security, and cloud expertise when planning any cloud migrations. Used smartly, the Edge lowers costs, enhances security, improves performance, and offers managed services that can speed up and simplify cloud adoption.

The Edge is defined by those customers, and that’s why the Edge is everywhere. And market by market, the infrastructure is delivering Edge capabilities around the world from hyperlocal to hyperscale.

This article was written by Phillip Marangella, CMO of EdgeConneX. Learn more about how EdgeConneX can help empower your edge by contacting the company today. 

LinkedinTwitterFacebookSubscribe
Mail

Tagged With: Edge Computing, EdgeConneX, Hyperscale data center

Newsletters

Stay informed: Get our weekly updates!

Are you a new reader? Follow Data Center Frontier on Twitter or Facebook.
voices@richmiller.biz'

About Voices of the Industry

Our Voice of the Industry feature showcases guest articles on thought leadership from sponsors of Data Center Frontier. For more information, see our Voices of the Industry description and guidelines..

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Voices of the Industry

Overcoming Supply Chain Roadblocks: How to Avoid Disruptions in Your Data Center

Overcoming Supply Chain Roadblocks: How to Avoid Disruptions in Your Data Center The data center industry continues to experience significant global supply chain problems. Brett Williams of Service Express, explores the importance of leveraging the secondary hardware market to overcome supply chain roadblocks.

White Papers

reliability-as-a-servce

The Affordable Microgrid: Securing Electric Reliability through Outsourcing

Microgrids, which use controllers to connect multiple power generation and storage sources, can provide electric reliability but they can also be too complex and costly for businesses to tackle on their own. Enchanted Rock explains how the reliability-as-a-service model makes microgrids affordable while providing electric reliability.

Get this PDF emailed to you.

We always respect your privacy and we never sell or rent our list to third parties. By downloading this White Paper you are agreeing to our terms of service. You can opt out at any time.

DCF Spotlight

Data center modules on display at the recent Edge Congress conference in Austin, Texas. (Photo: Rich Miller)

Edge Computing is Poised to Remake the Data Center Landscape

Data center leaders are investing in edge computing and edge solutions and actively looking at new ways to deploy edge capacity to support evolving business and user requirements.

An aerial view of major facilities in Data Center Alley in Ashburn, Virginia. (Image: Loudoun County)

Northern Virginia Data Center Market: The Focal Point for Cloud Growth

The Northern Virginia data center market is seeing a surge in supply and an even bigger surge in demand. Data Center Frontier explores trends, stats and future expectations for the No. 1 data center market in the country.

See More Spotlight Features

Newsletters

Get the Latest News from Data Center Frontier

Job Listings

RSS Job Openings | Pkaza Critical Facilities Recruiting

  • Critical Power Energy Manager - Data Center Development - Ashburn, VA
  • Site Development Manager - Data Center - Ashburn, VA
  • Data Center Facility Operations Director - Chicago, IL
  • Electrical Engineer - Senior - Dallas, TX
  • Mechanical Commissioning Engineer - Calgary, Alberta

See More Jobs

Data Center 101

Data Center 101: Mastering the Basics of the Data Center Industry

Data Center 101: Mastering the Basics of the Data Center Industry

Data Center Frontier, in partnership with Open Spectrum, brings our readers a series that provides an introductory guidebook to the ins and outs of the data center and colocation industry. Think power systems, cooling, solutions, data center contracts and more. The Data Center 101 Special Report series is directed to those new to the industry, or those of our readers who need to brush up on the basics.

  • Data Center Power
  • Data Center Cooling
  • Strategies for Data Center Location
  • Data Center Pricing Negotiating
  • Cloud Computing

See More Data center 101 Topics

About Us

Charting the future of data centers and cloud computing. We write about what’s next for the Internet, and the innovations that will take us there. We tell the story of the digital economy through the data center facilities that power cloud computing and the people who build them. Read more ...
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

About Our Founder

Data Center Frontier is edited by Rich Miller, the data center industry’s most experienced journalist. For more than 20 years, Rich has profiled the key role played by data centers in the Internet revolution. Meet the DCF team.

TOPICS

  • 5G Wireless
  • Cloud
  • Colo
  • Connected Cars
  • Cooling
  • Cornerstone
  • Coronavirus
  • Design
  • Edge Computing
  • Energy
  • Executive Roundtable
  • Featured
  • Finance
  • Hyperscale
  • Interconnection
  • Internet of Things
  • Machine Learning
  • Network
  • Podcast
  • Servers
  • Site Selection
  • Social Business
  • Special Reports
  • Storage
  • Sustainability
  • Videos
  • Virtual Reality
  • Voices of the Industry
  • Webinar
  • White Paper

Copyright Data Center Frontier LLC © 2022