EdgeConneX
Building Edge Data Centers for a Rearchitected Internet

From large-scale enterprises to small and medium-sized businesses, organizations are moving to the cloud to benefit from its many advantages. Cloud services deliver lower costs, scalable and flexible deployment options, lower capital spending and access to more innovative applications than on-premises infrastructure. However, despite the numerous benefits, some organizations are hesitant about adopting cloud services due to concerns regarding security, latency, cost, expertise and performance. A hybrid multi-cloud strategy is the way to solve for these challenges and is becoming the new reality for most enterprises.

One company that assists enterprises to overcome barriers to cloud adoption is EdgeConneX^®. A renowned edge data center solutions provider, EdgeConneX has an established global platform of hyperlocal to hyperscale data center facilities in more than 30 markets worldwide, connecting enterprises with Cloud Service Providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) with improved latency, performance and reliability. Additionally, by offering dedicated cloud on-ramp services like Megaport that bypass the public internet, EdgeConneX enables businesses to have direct connections to the cloud that are highly secure, offer guaranteed performance, improved latency, and ultimately reduce the overall costs of accessing the cloud. The company has also teamed up with managed service providers such as Rackspace to help organizations carry out cloud migration strategies. AWS also offers AWS Direct Connect that makes it easy to establish a dedicated network connection between an edge data center and one of the AWS Direct Connect locations, which in many cases can reduce network costs, increase bandwidth throughput, and provide a more consistent network experience than internet-based connections.

As a pioneer in defining and developing the Edge, EdgeConneX builds and delivers a full spectrum of edge data center solutions with the aim of bringing content, applications and cloud services closer to their end users. “Every edge data center is proximity-based and strategically located nearest to the end users’ point of access to reduce network latency and optimize performance,” says Phillip Marangella, Chief Marketing Officer of EdgeConneX. “Local proximity also brings the cloud closer to the enterprise, enabling more secure, real-time access to cloud applications and services while reducing backbone transport costs.”

The ability to build a facility anytime, anywhere and at any scale has earned EdgeConneX a global client base. EdgeConneX is also well positioned to work with hyperscale customers that require solutions customized according to their unique specifications and have successfully built and deployed data centers for some of the world’s largest brands.

Local proximity brings the cloud closer to the enterprise, enabling more secure, real-time access to cloud applications and services, while reducing backbone transport costs

What sets EdgeConneX a class apart from its competition is its ability to build data center solutions rapidly and meet client specifications with great flexibility.

Marangella recalls the time in the company’s early history when Cox and EdgeConneX partnered to address the networking challenges created as a result of the exponential increase in OTT traffic volumes in the Phoenix market. Before partnering with EdgeConneX, much of the content in Phoenix was served from a datacenter in Los Angeles. So, EdgeConneX built a customized edge data center in Phoenix, which enabled Cox to improve the quality of service and deliver a superior viewing experience for their customers, while also dramatically reducing costs. Cox and other network and cable operators replicated this model across many Edge markets in North America to better serve their content closer to end-users while also reducing costs. The same concept associated with latency and proximity applies to Cloud. EdgeConneX also has witnessed many cloud providers looking to bring their services closer to their business customers to also ensure better performance and lower their service costs.

The future demand for the Edge and the need to rearchitect the internet will be driven by the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, Autonomous Vehicles and numerous other applications. All of these trends will generate incredible amounts of data that will place unprecedented pressure on the internet to be able to handle the surge in traffic volumes.

Continuing on its track of innovation, EdgeConneX plans to solve the challenges related to rising internet traffic and alleviating network congestion at the Edge. The next step for the company is to rearchitect the internet to enable multi-directional traffic flows by building data centers in collaboration with enterprises and service providers that have the capability to accommodate the technological trends in the upcoming years. Edge data centers will be the key gateways to help intelligently and efficiently route all of the traffic that will be traversing the internet, from the Edge to the Core and beyond.