The edge is one of the hottest infrastructure domains right now, as content moves out to get closer to the end user and reduce latency. The latest example comes from the biggest cloud, as Amazon’s AWS Direct Connect now has its first metro endpoint in both the city of Portland, Oregon and in an EdgeConneX data center.
EdgeConneX has spent the last couple of years building out data centers close to the cable head ends and other key nodes of eyeball networks. The aim was to facilitate interconnection between content and eyeball networks without routing everything through the half dozen data center alleys across the country.
The arrival of AWS in such a domain suggests the role of these edge data centers is becoming more complex. They aren’t a place you would want to try to scale computational power, and so as the functions required out at the edge become more complex it’s a natural thing to bring dedicated access to the cloud where there is plenty of such power.
The success of cable MSOs in the business Ethernet world and its growing interest in reaching larger enterprises means that the endpoints that EdgeConneX specializes in being close to are right on the highway to applications and services in the cloud. That makes them potentially the most direct on-ramp available, fiber-willing of course.
No doubt Amazon AWS nodes and those of other cloud offerings will be appearing elsewhere in EdgeConneX’s footprint throughout the year as well as into other edge locations.
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Categories: Cloud Computing · Datacenter
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Unclear to me that this is a trend until we see several more. Portland is very near the actual physical location of AWS data center for the Seattle region, so it makes sense to have a Direct Connect close to it.