How will enterprises and service providers use the edge?

Edge performance networking

Ideally, the edge will bring greater performance through proximity to services, the business, or customers, and lower risk though private or fewer connections as well as efficiency by taking capacity closer to the user. In colocation, the edge can be a data center that provides access to a new or existing market that is not the core location for business, or it could where an organization can connect to a range of cloud or other service providers (maybe financial services ecosystems, content hubs etc).

When thinking about edge, you need to consider a mesh of services divided between core data center estates, where greater control may be required over IT for security or regulatory purposes, or where efficiency gains can be made on the data center floor), connectivity-rich colocation facilities that can provide edge through proximity to a large population base or to networks and service ecosystems and cell towers, or smart buildings where micro-modular data centers and servers can be housed for the purpose of more local service delivery. We refer to these cell tower sites as the ‘true’ edge, while many carrier-dense retail colocation providers will offer connectivity environments referred to as the ‘near edge'.

The trick to the edge, is it is all about performance and latency, so it will have very few network paths or ‘hops’ and little or no use of shared communications infrastructure – inside the colocated data center this could be cross connects, for example, to your hyperscale cloud provider, or others with a presence inside the facility.