DCD>Ebook - The Edge Issue

> eBook >> Edge

Exploring the what, why and how of a digital future at the Edge

ARE YOU READY TO EXPAND YOUR INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE NORDICS? DO IT RIGHT WITH SWEDEN'S FIRST CLIMATE-NEUTRAL COLOCATION PROVIDER LEARN MORE AT WWW.CONAPTO.COM

>> Contents

4

Introduction: Defining the Edge

5

What is the Edge?

7

Chapter one: A push to the Edge

8

The everywhere Edge

10

The industry is driving towards the Edge

12

Chapter two: Edge use cases

13

Edging closer to 5G

15

The future of cloud gaming is on the Edge

17

Edge hits the road

19

Panel > State of the Edge: What partnerships, collaborations, and technologies are enabling the Edge to grow in Europe?

20

Chapter three: The Edge opportunity

21

Edge and the long-term opportunities for colocation providers

24

The Edge business case

27

Panel > How is physical infrastructure responding at the far edge? And what is the opportunity?

28

Chapter four: Characteristics of an Edge colocation solution

29

Connecting the low-latency Edge

31

Bringing the Edge down to size

33

Q&A: Stefan Nilsson of Conapto

34

DCD>Talks Nordics with Håkan Björklund, Conapto

35

Further reading Sweden: The land of green data center opportunity Sweden ranks second most digitally influential country in the world Why Stockholm is the given place for your data center

13

15 21 29 24

31

>> DCD eBook | Edge

Introduction: Defining the Edge The Edge. The latest buzzword to grace our industry, or the future of our digital world?

In this eBook, we explore the workloads driving this technological shift, as well as the opportunities this presents for colocation providers and how, with the help of the Edge, they can get ahead (and stay ahead) in today’s fiercely competitive data center landscape.

From defining the Edge, to workable use cases and characteristics of an Edge colocation solution, we navigate through the noise to take the Edge from abstract concept to viable reality.

4 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

What is the Edge?

And can we define the undefinable?

Tanwen Dawn-Hiscox DCD

W

ith our insatiable demand for ‘always on’ data continuing to snowball, without change our digital infrastructure will be unable to handle the deluge at the speed to which we’ve grown accustomed.

Computing will have to move from big data centers to the “Edge” of the network, closer to users. But, is this just a periodic hype for a new buzzword, or is real change happening?

As with all hype, we can predict two things. Firstly, Edge will continue to change. The Edge that succeeds won’t necessarily be the Edge that is being debated now, just as the things we are doing with mobile data today aren’t the things that were predicted ten or twenty years ago.

“The smart thinker’s answer is that the Edge is at the telecoms base station,” Peter Hopton, the founder and CEO of liquid cooling systems provider Iceotope, told DCD. Usually “within a mile and a half to two miles from your location,” mobile network towers are also increasingly used for media content on phones, for smart vehicles, and for the sensors which make up the Internet of Things (IoT).

Edge is the marketing gold mine of the moment. But Hopton says Edge is a real trend, and those who grasp it will “come out on top.”

But the Edge will go further than this. A new generation of mobile networks is already upon us, with 5G promising faster links over a shorter range. And as 5G continues to spread, cell towers are “going to be getting a lot closer,” as close as “hundreds of meters” away.

“With the surge in social media, everyone wants to be a YouTuber, Instagrammer or Tiktoker and upload their own content. Data is now coming from the customer and being distributed from point to point. It’s no longer from the core outwards, it’s from the outside back to the core and then back out again.”

Just as Green IT was a great marketing buzzword ten years ago,

Secondly, if and when Edge wins, you’ll never hear the term again, because it will be like air; all around without needing a second thought.

All change Today, we centralize computing in remote locations, to benefit from economies of scale. But as processing and content distribution requirements grow, compute will need to be placed ten miles, five miles or less from the end-user.

The Edge has simply not yet been defined, and an industry that is not yet restricted has many more possibilities. >David Keegan DataQube

Edge also helps handle the change in the way data circulates. “It used to be that everything was made in Hollywood and distributed to customers. We had huge downloads but small uploads,” Hopton explained.

And this new dynamic is likely to evolve further as new technologies emerge.

Developing and commercializing these technologies may be dependent on the Edge’s distributed infrastructure, but some distributed approaches already exist, and will be improved by it.

Before it was cool Arguably the oldest Edge companies are content delivery networks (CDNs) such as Akamai. For them, the Edge has evolved into a

5 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

>> DCD eBook | Edge

protective shield that keeps content safe against attacks and outages.

Some companies already run applications that rely on distributed infrastructure: HPE, a company that has invested over $4bn in Edge technologies, said this model is being used in large businesses and stadiums enabling WiFi connectivity; and in manufacturing environments, for predictive maintenance.

For example, Colin I’Anson, an HPE fellow and the company’s chief technologist for Edge, said its IoT sensors and servers are used by participants in the Formula 1 Grand Prix for airflow dynamics: “There are rules from the FIA and they allow you to only have a certain amount of energy use, a certain amount of compute use.

“We’ve purposed that capability for the IoT so we’ve got a low power ability to place a good server down at the Edge. We are then capable of running significant workloads.”

On this basis, it’s clear that Edge is not a single thing, but a dynamic term, for a dynamic set of functions, delivered on a highly varied set of hardware.

The truth So, we’ve established the Edge as a dynamic term, which means the truth is, none of us really agree what the Edge is.

As Mark Howell, technical specialist and manager, IT facilities engineering at Ford put it, “The Edge seems to mean something different to pretty much every person and every company you talk to.”

Is Edge a location? Is it the size of a facility? Is it the applications the facility enables?

As Howell explains, when it comes to data center facilities, they more or less have the same purpose.

Edge is a real trend, and those who grasp it will come out on top > Peter Hopton Iceotope

“In data centers, there is telecommunications equipment, compute – however powerful it happens to be, and media storage.

These are the three things that are hosted in data centers, large or small.”

Sameh Yamany Ph.D, CTO at Viavi Solutions, while admittedly agreeing that the definition of Edge is somewhat subjective, argues that Edge is a matter of latency. What that latency is, depends on the type of company you are.

“Sometimes we describe the Edge as where the most critical application is. Delay is one of the major characteristics that says what is the Edge and what is not.

For example, a service provider providing gaming services, for them mobile Edge computing is the first axis where the gamers will play.

Edge is this location where you need to provide below one second of delay.

“Whereas, an aeroplane engine manufacturer would have almost a million sensors working together.

For them, the Edge is exactly at the site of the manufacturer, all these sensors working with artificial intelligence need a millisecond-level delay.

“The definition of Edge depends on the application and the requirements of the network.”

David Keegan, CEO of DataQube, instead believes that the Edge has simply not yet been defined, and an industry that is not yet restricted has many more possibilities. 

6 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

Chapter 1: A push to the Edge Fueled by IoT and the arrival of 5G, the ongoing decentralization of the cloud is driving the growing shift towards distributed ‘Edge’ computing.

As a provider, you need to be able to deliver services at the speed and quality that end users expect, there is simply no margin for latency and intermittent connections.

With an Edge data center, companies can be where their end users are. And this market is also growing; PwC US has predicted that the global market for Edge data centers will triple over the years 2017 through 2024, reaching a worth of $4 billion.

And it’s clear to see why this push to the Edge is happening. Edge data centers enable large portions of the data processing, storage, control and management of local applications to take place much closer to users.

Consequently, latency is significantly decreased and application responsiveness optimized, leading to maximized enterprise productivity, efficiency, user experience and of course, a competitive “edge”.

7 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

>> DCD eBook | Edge

The everywhere Edge Edge data centers need to be everywhere – all over the world – in order to deliver the killer apps that users are increasingly demanding

W

hat is the killer app for the Edge? If you said it was streaming content, you’d be right…in some places. If you said it was cloud access, you’d be right in others.

If you said it was XaaS or 5G, or gaming or IoT, you may have been right in other places and times because all of those apps and services have been helped and accelerated by the speed, proximity, security, and reliability of the Edge over the past decade.

But in 2022? The killer app for the Edge is as old and ubiquitous as the world itself – because the true killer app is the everywhere Edge.

If Edge data centers started out by serving up streaming content and

Phillip Marangella EdgeConnex

graduated to making it easier, faster, and more secure to access cloud services, those were just the opening acts for what the Edge would ultimately deliver.

What are the key benefits that every user sees when the Edge helps deliver more data to more people in more places?

In a world where data volumes and velocity are accelerating at unprecedented rates, where more businesses are engaged in digital transformation, and where more consumers depend on data delivered to the workplace, the home, the car, and everywhere in between, worldwide, it is important to recognize that all of this is made possible by the Edge. And on a human scale, it is the Edge that is helping to make the cloud, content, and connectivity available to virtually every person on the planet.

Performance

On a human scale, it is the Edge that is helping to make the cloud, content, and connectivity available to virtually every person on the planet > Phillip Marangella EdgeConnex

The number of applications that rely on and benefit from the Edge is almost impossible to quantify, but it runs the gamut from gaming to streaming, from all-electric vehicles to VR goggles, from cloud access to IoT sensors.

The Edge offers proximity, both to the servers and to the end users of these applications, with better network routing that translates into better performance. The Edge can’t accelerate the speed of light, but it can help reduce the distance data has to travel as it is transformed into information used by applications.

User experience For individual end users, any app can be a killer app. If the weather app on your phone can tell you it’s going to start raining at your address in seven minutes – and it turns out to be accurate – a city-based user

8 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

The number of applications that rely on and benefit from the Edge is almost impossible to quantify > Phillip Marangella, EdgeConnex

might return to that app many times in a day.

For the driver of a connected car, the killer app may be behind the scenes, keeping a car’s software and content up to date. And in a world of competing streaming platforms, end users will gravitate to the services that offer the best experience in finding programs they want to watch and in streaming content without delays, rebuffering, or lowresolution picture quality.

For any of these end users the Edge helps service providers deliver more data to more places faster and more consistently, whether they’re in a city that’s home to tens of millions or people or in a rural community halfway around the world.

Economics For service providers, the Edge offers cost savings that a more centralized solution cannot. If your business delivers terabytes of data to end users scattered around the globe, bandwidth costs can cripple your business case if your service architecture isn’t taking advantage of the Edge.

Intelligent, distributed architectures can anticipate where your data needs to be stored, so when a user in Seattle uses your app at the same time as a user is rural Florida you’re not sending data over thousands of miles for every request, and you’re not letting your Florida users suffer longer response times than your PNW users are experiencing.

The Edge helps you save directly on bandwidth costs, and it saves you the costs of unhappy customers.

But it’s not enough to say the Edge can facilitate these applications and services. Faster networks and more powerful computing chips can help do that, too.

What the Edge brings that’s unique – it’s killer app, if you will, is the ability to take these benefits to all corners of the globe, into markets once thought to be inaccessible in any practical sense.

An apt analogy might say that, like faster networks or chips, faster jets or larger ships can’t, by themselves, solve global supply chain issues.

They need more and better airports so they can bring freight

For service providers, the Edge offers cost savings that a more centralized solution cannot > Phillip Marangella

to more places, accelerating local distribution and getting the goods wherever they need to go, faster, safer, and more economically.

Similarly, when we look at data center evolution, the Edge began by connecting underserved markets in countries and regions that were already at the forefront of digital transformation. Now, with the emergence of data sovereignty, coupled with the growing benefits of once-local businesses having access to wider markets, and end users having access to the best apps and services the world has to offer, the Edge has taken on greater importance as a facilitator of the global digital economy.

Centralized data hubs have not delivered the services the market needs for many years, but in a global digital economy the digital supply chain must proliferate to reach more markets, more businesses, and more end users.

The killer app is the everywhere Edge. The Edge has always been elastic, flexible, and scalable. And now it is bringing cloud, content, connectivity, and capacity to markets, businesses, and end users that are beginning to demand better performance, better user experiences, and better economics for Internet-enabled services. With the everywhere Edge, you actually can get there, from everywhere. 

EdgeConnex

9 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

>> DCD eBook | Edge

The industry is driving towards the Edge A dive into what this journey might look like

W

ith the rise of 5G, AI, the IoT, and other new technologies, there has been an inevitable need to host more computing at the Edge.

However, this does not mean the death of the cloud. Instead, we are seeing a redistribution, as consumer needs and business priorities change.

At DCD’s recent Building the Edge broadcast, we sat down with a panel from the industry to discuss these industry shifts.

Daniel Bazer, a senior contributing analyst for Structure Research, identified three key ways this change is occurring.

“The first is a very broad movement to do with the way the internet, in the last 20 years, has become more centralized.

“The cloud providers themselves

have used a one-too-many massive scale model to drive profits.

Amazon’s always been very open about saying that the bigger data centers they build, the more they can lower their prices.

“I think there is inevitably going to be a move away from that centralization period. Not just from a compute perspective, but also from a network perspective in places like the Americas, where at one point, most Latin American traffic was handled through the internet there, because that was the best place to reach end-users.

“There was a similar kind of effect going on in Germany where the best place to hit end users if you’re a gaming company in Russia would be from Germany rather than actually hosting in Russia itself. Now as we’re seeing infrastructure being built out, that will change.”

Local small colo companies were put out of business because people could put their services on the cloud a lot quicker, cheaper, and more dynamically. It is ironic that those very same companies are now looking for those locations and spaces > Eddie Kilbane Dataplex

Georgia Butler DCD

Eddie Kilbane, CEO & co-founder, Dataplex, noted the impact this initial move to a centralized internet had.

“The local small colo companies were put out of business because people could put their services on the cloud a lot quicker, cheaper, and more dynamically. It is ironic that those very same companies are now looking for those locations and spaces.”

It is not only geographically speaking that we can expect changes to occur. After all, the Edge is not a location, as such.

“The second thing we’re seeing is that applications are changing themselves to be more distributed.

At the moment the internet is dominated by IP (particularly video) which is a one-too-many and therefore absolutely fits in beautifully with that big central control internet model that we have now. We’re going to see more oneto-one machines, we’re going to see more machines meet machines, and we’re also going to see more person vs person gaming.

“Anyone who has kids knows they are playing games with each other, and we’re going to see more interaction that’s going to mean more infrastructure at the Edge.”

“The last thing we’re seeing driving demand is the rise of the

10 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

industry cloud, particularly in places like Germany around the automotive industry.”

As with any major move towards a new approach, the data center industry must consider the sustainability of such a shift.

Stefan Nilsson, chief commercial officer for Conapto, touched on how this drive to the Edge can also be an opportunity for maximizing sustainability.

“You can look at sustainability in many aspects when you’re looking at the Edge. Obviously, you have things like clean energy, fossil-free renewables, cheap energy, and lots of energy, and all of those USPs that we

You can look at sustainability in many aspects when you’re looking at the Edge > Stefan Nilsson Conapto obviously have here in the Nordics.

But then you have other interesting aspects of sustainability as well.

“That’s when you are talking more about those Edges that are already there. You have things like retrofitting and redesigning already

established situations where you actually can do quite a lot from a sustainability perspective.

“Then you also have the saleleaseback service that we offer our customers here in Sweden, where we can actually come by their old data center, gradually move them into our sustainable and modern facilities, and then we can close down the old, more dirty facility, which means that we can then get rid of a lot of energy inefficient data centers.”

With end-user demands changing, could an Edge location strategy be the key to balancing the impact of market factors with low latency needs? 

>Connect



Panel

At the regional Edge: How are geopolitical and macroeconomic factors affecting expansion?

Click here to receive a link to the full presentation

11 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

>> DCD eBook | Edge

Chapter 2: Edge use cases At the moment less than 10 percent of business data is created and processed at the Edge of the network, but according to Gartner, that will reach 75 percent by 2025. This is most likely because our digitalized world simply can’t continue to evolve without the Edge.

Edge computing brings to life innovations that once seemed but a futuristic pipedream. But the enhanced speeds and reduced latency brought about by the Edge are now opening up a plethora of use cases, some of which probably haven’t even been thought of yet.

Thanks to the Edge, we are heading toward a faster, more efficient future across a myriad of industries. Cloud gamers can now bet big, knowing their connection can keep pace.

Healthcare will be made easier via improved telemedicine, and road rage (in theory) will be a thing of the past, with the advent of automated, or eventually, fully self-driving vehicles.

As for 5G networks, faster download and upload speeds on our mobile devices is just the tip of the iceberg.

From cashier-less retail stores to highly automated manufacturing processes, and even robo-dogs in data centers, is the only limitation of the Edge our imagination?

12 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

Edging closer to W 5G

Jürgen Hatheier Ciena

hen Apple launched its first 5G iPhone we saw a fresh wave of excitement and a surge in demand for 5G across the UK. Consumers were looking for the promised land: new speeds and better bandwidth.

Back in 2021, CBS Insights predicted that 5G technology would take off faster than any previous mobile technology, and forecast one billion users by 2023.

The pivotal role of data centers in supporting widespread adoption

The GSMA has also predicted 5G networks will account for as many as 1.2 billion connections by 2025, giving rise to a new era in which connectivity will support even more digital experiences.

However, this is all heavily dependent on the underlying infrastructure and its ability to support 5G. One of which is the data center and the formation of Edge cloud, where thousands of smaller data centers are being created as close as possible to where the content is generated, consumed, and processed. This

13 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

>> DCD eBook | Edge

An increasing number of applications require real-time latency, and this is driving the demand for Edge cloud. The business drivers for these are not only consumer behavior, but enterprises improving their operations or monetizing improved customer experiences > Jürgen Hatheier Ciena will reduce latency, lower transport costs, increase security, and in some cases enable better data sovereignty compliance.

As we start to shift towards this Edge cloud model, experts have estimated three times as many data centers at the network edge will exist, requiring the entire cloud ecosystem to adapt and provide new levels of connectivity.

For data center providers this highlights the growing importance of data center interconnectivity and its critical role in supporting our digital world.

Grasping the Edge Edge computing has been around for years, but the ‘Edge cloud’ concept has only recently gained popularity. What we mean by this is the addition of many new scaleddown, distributed, and connected data centers – a network of storage and compute resources that work together to process content, services, and applications using AI and machine learning.

In addition to processing benefits, there are other plus points to Edge cloud – including reduced

data transmission costs. Perhaps it comes as little surprise then that Mobile Experts estimate that Edge computing will drive $7bn of revenue by 2025. They’re also predicting that more than half of Edge data centers will be onpremises, hosted by an enterprise with another 20-25 percent hosted by telcos or ISPs. New use cases An increasing number of applications require real-time latency, and this is driving the demand for Edge cloud. The business drivers for these are not only consumer behavior, but enterprises improving their operations or monetizing improved customer experiences.

One example of where this technology would work particularly well is in a cashier-less retail store.

This new payment format is where retailers (e.g. Amazon Go stores) embed cameras into store ceilings to capture images of shoppers purchasing goods and these pictures are then analyzed using AI to determine what goods shoppers have purchased.

Mobile Experts estimate that Edge computing will drive $7bn of revenue by 2025

The technology eliminates the need for shoppers to go through a cashier at the check-out counter while their credit cards are billed directly for the goods they have purchased. As you can imagine, significant computing and storage resources are needed either in the retail stores or in the Edge cloud to perform this near real-time image processing to deliver a seamless customer experience.

Another good example is in the industrial IoT/smart manufacturing space, where processes are highly customized and automated. Here, manufacturing lines are occupied by industrial robots whose functions are carefully controlled by local computing resources that use machine learning and AI to detect defects identified in the manufacturing process and adjust accordingly in near real-time.

To simplify connectivity on the plant floor, intelligent industrial robots will in the future connect via 5G (private or carrier managed), require low-latency, and often highcapacity, network performance to ensure low manufacturing defects and maximize the safety of local workers.

Cashier-less retail stores and manufacturing are just the tip of the iceberg but show how the demand for Edge cloud is growing.

Moving forwards The past twelve months has already demonstrated the value of Edge cloud and soon, with 5G we expect to see significant uptake – setting the stage for new levels of application performance, the creation of new services and importantly, finally enabling individuals and organizations to achieve new levels of connectivity.

> Jürgen Hatheier Ciena

14 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

The future of cloud gaming is on the Edge

The combination of cloud and Edge computing creates a more flexible platform that provides gaming developers and publishers with the ability to scale

I

nput latency and visual lag can have an outsized and negative impact on the gamer’s experience, especially for new cloud gaming platforms, if servers reside in centralized cloud data centers that are located hundreds of miles away or more from the end user.

Whereas centralized cloud service providers require companies to keep content in a single location, Edge computing enables the distribution of application processes at the edge of the network and as near to the user as possible.

The Edge enables new cloud gaming platforms to eliminate the need for dedicated devices, such as a console or high-end personal computer, while helping solve the latency issues in transferring data from the cloud to the user and the rendering of graphically intensive video.

Greg Elliot 1623 Farnam

The Edge enables new cloud gaming platforms to eliminate the need for dedicated devices, such as a console or high-end personal computer, while helping solve the latency issues in transferring data from the cloud to the user

Many online gaming experiences, especially games with multiplayer functionality, are highly interactive in nature.

Multiplayer gaming demands real-time response rates, which the cloud, despite its many advantages, cannot provide solely on

15 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

> Greg Elliott 1623 Farnam

>> DCD eBook | Edge

A secure, interconnected carrier hotel or Edge data center can meet the proximity, low-latency and rapid scalability requirements that cloud gaming customers demand for their data-intensive workloads > Greg Elliott 1623 Farnam its own due to the geographical location of cloud data centers.

As a distributed computing topology, Edge computing ensures users across the globe can enjoy a high-quality gaming experience with minimal latency regardless of where they are playing.

The combination of cloud and Edge computing also creates a more flexible platform that provides gaming developers and publishers with the ability to scale.

At the same time, Edge computing allows gamers to move seamlessly between different locations and varying devices. Hence, a Red Dead Redemption shoot-out that began at home during breakfast on a 4K television can continue on an iPhone on the commute to work – provided the gamer is not driving.

East-west, north-south, game on In the past few years, augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) devices have become increasingly popular in enhancing the gaming experience, which in turn has placed added pressure on the cloud infrastructure supporting these games.

Once again, latency and

responsiveness are the major challenges for both game developers and the cloud gaming community, but major cloud providers are answering the call.

Google’s cloud gaming platform, Stadia, supports multiple game engines, including Unreal and Unity. Stadia, similar to Microsoft’s xCloud, is designed to create a more seamless relationship between game developers and end users by offering a host of tools to enhance the gaming community and experience from content development to distribution.

But without the right distribution strategy, the onus of which is on the major cloud providers and the leading developers, the games carry a high risk of performing below user expectations. So, while it can be said that the future of gaming is in the cloud, the centralized cloud data center on its own is not sufficient to bring these platforms to life.

Major cloud service providers with gaming platforms typically lease space in colocation facilities, at the edge of the network. The most effective colocation providers in this business case have created a fertile network ecosystem that makes it

easy to interconnect with carriers, content, mobile, wireless and ISPs. These carrier hotels and Edge data centers operate as network traffic hubs that distribute data directly to where it needs to go. When cloud gaming companies colocate their IT infrastructure in proximity to network providers, this allows gaming businesses to maintain the low latency and optimized performance that demanding gamers expect.

A secure, interconnected carrier hotel or Edge data center can meet the proximity, low-latency and rapid scalability requirements that cloud gaming customers demand for their data-intensive workloads.

Overwhelming current networks, more data today is being generated at edge endpoints than ever before.

For this reason, ultra-low latency, geographic proximity, and local access to multiple cloud options is essential to both established gaming providers and independent gaming developers to ensure uninterrupted play and a high quality end-user experience. 

16 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

Edge hits the road Alphabet rethinks how civilization and self-driving systems interact, opening up an opportunity for the Edge

T

he endless potential of 5G networks were precisely what was needed to help get us through the difficult times brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic. Nearly two years on, it seems working remotely, something that for many was supposed to be a temporary arrangement, has become the new normal.

There’s something strange afoot in Michigan.

For more than a decade, Google has been developing self-driving cars with the aim of rolling out

fully autonomous systems that can operate independently within cities.

But a new development suggests that its confidence in achieving ‘Level 5’ autonomy any time soon is waning, and that might be huge news for the Edge.

Edge companies have long touted self-driving cars as the compelling use case they need – something that demands a vast roll-out of latencysensitive compute resources. But their statements have never quite squared with the autonomous vision of companies like Google, which

Seb Moss DCD

insisted that any Edge computing needed could be in the car itself, no compute-filled street lamp required.

Now the future isn’t so clear.

Mixed signals Back in late 2020, Google-parent Alphabet announced that its subsidiary Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners had a new subsidiary of its own, Cavnue. The company held a launch event for a new initiative – to build a 40-mile (64km) stretch of road.

17 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

>> DCD eBook | Edge Given the gap between the benefits of CAV infrastructure and the comparative lack of investment in this field, there is a compelling need and an opportunity in the coming years for forward-thinking jurisdictions to prioritize such infrastructure This might not sound like much, and a strange project to highlight, but this is no ordinary road. Connecting the old, rusting automotive city of Detroit to the vibrant self-driving research hub of Ann Arbor, it is also more than just a heavy-handed metaphor.

It’s an admission of failure. The road is set to be designed specifically for autonomous and connected cars, with Alphabet facing the reality that autonomous vehicles aren’t quite ready for existing city structures. “The general consensus is it’s harder than we thought,” Cavnue cofounder Jonathan Winer told Fortune at launch.

The project has an advisory committee of automotive and autonomous mobility companies, including Ford, GM, Argo AI, Arrival, BMW, Honda, Toyota, TuSimple, and Alphabet’s Waymo. Ford and the University of Michigan will also operate as project partners.

The idea is to learn what infrastructure and software will be required outside of self-driving vehicles to make them safe.

It’s early days, and there’s a 24-month consultancy plan.

The parent company Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (owned by Alphabet and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan) is anxious to avoid the fate of Sidewalk Labs (wholly owned

by Alphabet), whose plans for a mini smart city in Toronto were thwarted by opposition from locals, privacy campaigners, and a Blackberry billionaire.

Already, this new project has political backing, with Detroit’s

mayor and Michigan’s governor throwing their weight behind it – not a surprise, given the precarious economy.

But the fear of cancellation may have prompted Cavnue to be more open than it would have preferred, publishing a proposal on its website detailing the project. DCD went through it, and found a vision that would require a whole lot of Edge compute.

“Despite $80 billion invested in AV solutions, full autonomy is years, if not decades, away,” the document admits. “However, this investment dwarfs the amount

The idea is to learn what infrastructure and software will be required outside of self-driving vehicles to make them safe

spent on supportive infrastructure that could accelerate the adoption of CAVs [Connected & Automated Vehicles] and allow them to operate even better than uncoordinated AVs. [Cavnue] was founded to close this gap.”

The document explains that while on-board sensors like cameras or LiDAR are used to detect signage and traffic signals, this “could be enhanced by having this

information digitally transmitted from the roadway infrastructure.”

It adds: “Most AV companies make the assumption that the infrastructure is not evolving – and so do not plan for or invest in communications with infrastructure or other vehicles.

“Given the gap between the benefits of CAV infrastructure and the comparative lack of investment in this field, there is a compelling need and an opportunity in the coming years for forward-thinking jurisdictions to prioritize such infrastructure.”

The 40-mile corridor will consist of four layers – augmenting the physical roadway; installing and integrating digital systems, including sensors and connectivity; a “digital twin” system which represents the environment in real time and coordinates CAV driving; and operational infrastructure, such as shared mobility systems.

All of this requires a fair amount of sensors dotted along streets, matched by compute to power it all – and it has to operate quickly (at a low latency), given what’s at stake.

For this project, Cavnue “will function as systems integrator, combining best-in-class hardware, software, and operational components required to facilitate CAV corridor projects,” but to be accepted more broadly the company realizes this will need to be a vendor-neutral system.

Here, other Edge companies may find success – with 4.18 million miles of road in the US alone, there’s a lot of space for competition. 

18 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

>Connect



Panel

State of the Edge: What partnerships, collaborations, and technologies are enabling the Edge to grow in Europe?

CLICK TO WATCH

19 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

>> DCD eBook | Edge

Chapter 3: The Edge opportunity Edge computing – particularly Edge colocation – can give your business a competitive Edge (pun intended) in several areas. Aside from improved speed and reduced latency, you gain the flexibility to personalize content for your customers, something 70 percent of end-users say they value over face-toface experiences.

With the added bonus of scalability and enhanced security, Edge colocation is the way to go if you want to provide a better online experience, secure your business-critical data, lower costs and reduce latency in underserved zones.

20 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

Edge and the long term opportunities for colocation providers How global providers are addressing the rise in demand for Edge facilities

E

dge computing expands cloud and dedicated infrastructure so that data collection, processing and services can be executed closer to the point at which data is created or used. This means a new breed of facility optimized for smaller deployments (think multi kW rather than MW) located close to end users and devices, is emerging.

This article sets out some use cases, and points out what to look for in an Edge deployment, as well as longer-term opportunities for colo providers.

21 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

Frank Sclazo Iron Mountain Data Centers

>> DCD eBook | Edge Demand at the Edge An interesting new piece of research

by Tomas Rahkonen and Rhonda Ascierto of the Uptime Institute indicates that the portion of owners/ operators using more than 20 Edge data centers today is likely to double in the next two to three years (from nine percent now to 20 percent in two to three years).

The Linux Foundation estimates that the global power footprint for infrastructure Edge deployment will grow from 1 GW in 2019 to over 40 GW by 2028 > Frank Scalzo Iron Mountain Data Centers robust service levels to operate successfully.

Others, like 5G processing and Industry 4.0 apps will only work with sub-5ms latency. Video, gaming, AR and IoT will generally operate in the space in between in terms of criticality and latency.

The colocation opportunity

Uptime Institute 2021 Supply-side stats Suppliers are on top of this growing demand. According to the Uptime Institute data, in North America just over 30 percent (and in Europe just under 20 percent, with China/APAC slightly higher) anticipate a yearly volume of more than 100 Edge data centers in two to three years; a huge rise.

As the Uptime diagram demonstrates, specific requirements across these apps vary widely. Some, like nextgen medical imaging apps or CCTV analytics, will require very

To service these apps (and the others that will follow) both cloud and colocation players are extending their Edge infrastructure.

However, none of the major cloud providers has a network of wholly-owned facilities and speed of deployment will likely mean

Other studies concur. Edge is the fastest-growing segment of the cloud category with the total market expected to expand 37 percent annually through 2027, according to Grand View Research.

The Linux Foundation estimates that the global power footprint for infrastructure Edge deployment will grow from 1 GW in 2019 to over 40 GW by 2028.

Leading applications Driving demand will be telecom networks, IoT for energy production, video streaming and cloud gaming, retail and public transport apps, as well as multi-point next-gen Industry 4.0 apps.

Uptime Institute 2021

22 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

some partnership with colocation providers.

Edge infrastructure that isn’t designed to be managed remotely, or that must be administered by contract personnel can be a risky proposition in far-flung locations.

And self-contained miniature data centers can be prone to theft, weather damage and unplanned outages.

This means that the fastest, safest and most flexible option for some customers will be to locate their Edge infrastructure with mature colocation providers that are fully equipped and staffed by trained local-language personnel.

Facilities need to be secure and reliable with power, environmental and seismic controls that already meet local requirements. Plus they should be fully compliant with a raft of third-party standards as well as local regulations.

Longer-term expansion is also an issue; as requirements grow, customers need to be certain that their power and space needs are anticipated and catered for.

Ready-made ecosystems What is less often discussed is the opportunity for businesses to leverage the Edge to spawn ecosystems that generate new revenue. To realize this value, companies must think of the Edge as

The opportunity presented by large flows of sensor and device data is likely to create new marketplaces of real time information, rather like high-frequency trading communities in the financial services sector > Frank Scalzo Iron Mountain Data Centers more than just a collection point for data from intelligent devices.

They should broaden their vision to see the Edge as a new business hub. The opportunity presented by large flows of sensor and device data is likely to create new marketplaces of real time information, rather like high-frequency trading communities in the financial services sector.

Ready-made ecosystems provided by colocation providers will offer the added attraction of integrating ecosystems across the Edge, the core, and the clouds, globally. This vertical integration could offer maximum choice and agility with minimum complexity.

Most of the larger colocation providers support extensive ecosystems of customers and partners to whom new customers can connect. They offer specialized network connectivity, access to fiber networks, software-defined networks, streaming services, specialized peering solutions, vertical market expertise and access to data centers in specific geographic and remote locations.

To help customers expand in a transactional API-driven world, many established colocation providers have also adopted public application program interfaces for rapid onboarding of customers and partners, and have existing backend integration with a wide variety of other providers, including telcos, cloud platforms and colocation partners.

Opportunities at the Edge It is hard to generalize about the Edge, as these types of facilities will add a complimentary extra layer to the data center infrastructure world.

The large multi-MW facilities will continue to expand, as core compute and storage nodes continue to offer the best scale solution. Smaller footprint Edge facilities will offer rapid deployment, autonomous operation and global integration to support both current and future applications. 

>Connect Round Table: How are colocation providers innovating to manage the cloud at the ‘far edge’?

23 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

>> DCD eBook | Edge

The Edge business case Investors want to spend money on the Edge, but first they need to see it work

Seb Moss DCD

A

s money floods into the data center market, similar funding of Edge projects and companies has been conspicuously absent.

After years of Edge expansion being perpetually on the horizon, investors are cautiously exploring the field, looking for opportunity in what could be the next big thing.

“Edge is still quite complex,” Isaac Vaz, director of Aviva Investors, said at DCD>Building the Edge. “So to the extent that Edge messaging can be translated better to institutional capital and private equity it will definitely widen the pool of capital that can definitely come into fund Edge computing.

“Otherwise, we have been building a pool of capital just from venture capitalists and private equity,” he explained.

“But if you really can start to communicate the benefits and maybe find a way to de-risk the investment in the Edge, then the pool of capital opens to trillions of dollars from life insurance and pension capital. They are very keen to invest in these emerging technologies but, obviously, they are seeking some downside protection.”

That downside protection comes in the form of stable business plans,

not built on hope, but on specific customer sets and stable roadmaps built on predictable demand.

“We see demand coming in two distinct branches, one before 2025, and then one after,” Anthony Milovantsev, managing director of investment advisor Altman Solon, said.

“They’re actually very discrete, different use cases and segments driving the two time periods. And in the first one, the next four years, we see the Edge being used by

If you really can start to communicate the benefits and maybe find a way to de-risk the investment in the Edge, then the pool of capital opens to trillions of dollars from life insurance and pension capital > Isaac Vax, Aviva Investors

mobile network operators (MNOs), hyperscalers, and local managed service providers/SaaS players. And they all need Edge for different things.”

MNOs are primarily focused on the 5G roll out over the next few years, Milovantsev said. “They quite literally need physical space in a dispersed fashion to make this basic consumer product work. And I can also tell you very frankly, from our discussions with them that some of them are still debating how much they need.”

While it’s not clear how much of the Edge telcos will use, and how quickly 5G will expand, “they’ll be the first users and will really make the revenues flow in the early years,” Milovantsev believes.

Then comes the hyperscalers, who are still piloting projects and working out business plans. “They’re really testing out their user base, what it’s like to have very localized availability zones and pushing through image rendering and gaming use cases,” he said.

“It’s going to be smaller in the early years. They’re just testing the pricing models: how much they’re paying for infrastructure, and how much their customers will pay them for the actual services.”

Once they settle on what they

24 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

think works – likely involving a partnership with telcos – hyperscalers could bring the same aggressive tactics and big wallets we have seen in the standard data center market.

“And then the third part to that is local managed service providers and SaaS players, where they’re providing services to enterprise customers, and really seeing that latency really matters,” Milovantsev said. “And we’re pretty confident that this is going to be pretty robust in four years. There are already revenue flows in the ecosystem from these three.”

Even though 5G is only a medium for communicating, if we don’t bring in a very strong 5G aspect into the whole equation, you lose part of the room in terms of the investment group > Eddie Kilbane Dataplex

Then comes the second wave, after 2025 or so, Milovantsev believes. “This is where things get very interesting, but are a lot more into the future. And these use cases, there’ll be a lot of buzzwords here: So one day there will be 6G, IoT, autonomous car driving, real time advertising, remote healthcare.”

And then, hopefully, enterprises will come on board. “When companies start to really understand that this is going to benefit their customers, and is mission critical for them, then the ecosystem is gonna take off – we think it’s going to be in that second tranche. If it takes off earlier than that, that’s even better.”

But even with this optimism, and an understanding that the Edge will have to grow steadily in waves, it has been hard for those building such networks to raise money.

“When we normally go to the banks that we use for our traditional data centers, it’s very easy to sit

Panel Discussion: Edge datacenter-nomics: Who’s paying for the world’s biggest infrastructure project?

This Edge network really needs to be at the ground where it’s the closest to the fiber closest to the public and the eyes, and then connected to 5G for connectivity

down with them and show them where the revenue is going to come in, what our capex is, what our operating costs will be, and where our returns to make the whole project work are,” Dataplex CEO and co-founder Eddie Kilbane said. “The problem you have at the moment with Edge is this is a very unknown territory.

“This is very much like the Klondike of Europe,” he said,

referencing the pinnacle of the US gold rush. “We’re going to build a network where we’re asking people to put capital out before we start so that we can get the hyperscalers and the SaaS-type companies to put their equipment in locations on the basis they can see how it works and work out in the own minds, what their requirements are in terms of scale and size.”

Dataplex hopes to build up to 1,000 ‘ENode’ Edge data centers across European city centers, each home to 10-18 racks. “We’re looking for initial seed capital for the 10 sites across the UK, so we can build a platform,” Kilbane said. “We’ve had a number of hyperscalers say that if we build it, they would provide racks in those locations so that they can trial this and see how this works.

“Once that happens, then it is easy to go to something like Aviva Investors to say ‘look, here’s the concept. Here’s the project. These are the people who have worked on the trial. These are the results.

And these are the long term commitments they’re going to make.

Are you happy to commit now to that first $100 million for the next rollout?’”

It’s just about getting that initial ball rolling, Kilbane argues. “We’re just trying to find that right partner that can take us all the way,” he said.

“It’s been a long journey, a lot of slide decks, a lot of meetings, a lot of ‘thank you, we’ll get back to you.’ It’s been a very slow burn.”

The one thing the company found proved successful was to mention 5G a lot in pitches. “Even though 5G is only a medium for communicating, if we don’t bring in a very strong 5G aspect into the whole equation, you lose part of the room in terms of the investment group,” he said.

It is also getting easier due to growing publicity about the Edge, and general growing hype, he said.

“It’s tough, but when you’re a first adopter and a first mover, you’re always gonna have to do quite a few presentations before you hit the mother lode.”

Kilbane admitted that things are slightly different in the US, where

25 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

>> DCD eBook | Edge

Investors are keen to get involved in emerging Edge technologies mobile operators or mobile tower companies are looking to use their existing infrastructure and are more actively investing in the Edge.

That doesn’t work in Europe, he noted: “The European tower business is completely different in so far as the masts tend to be on top of roofs. This Edge network really needs to be at the ground where it’s the closest to the fiber closest to the public and the eyes, and then connected to 5G for connectivity.”

While US telcos are looking to use some of their infrastructure for Edge, Altman Solon’s Milovantsev noted that all over the world, people are cautious about anything that might require them to spend money.

“They’re very nervous about anything too cutting edge, because this is an industry that largely got burned by the promise of 4G,” he said. “They spent billions of dollars of capex on it, and largely just invited over-the-top applications to kill old revenue streams.

“They have physical assets that they can use – they don’t have to be Tier IV data centers, they can be very simple telco PoPs,” he explained.

“And within that you can place some servers and call it an Edge solution just to test out the market. They’re doing this without spending the big check just yet.”

Another way they are exploring the space is by selling off their infrastructure and land, putting another group in charge of the costs and risks. “These carve-outs can be in the dozens, hundreds or thousands of facilities as they basically have physical assets all up and down a country,” Milovantsev said,

in building successful, sustainable

“And in that scenario, they’d have somebody else, invest and take over, and the telco would be anchor tenants – they could get the benefit of Edge proliferation and be customers without doing all the dirty work.”

opportunities as we look to build this

And this theory has already been actioned – European telecoms giant Liberty Global partnered with digital infrastructure fund Digital Colony to launch a huge European Edge data center joint venture, AtlasEdge Data Centres.

this] we may be the second adopter,

The company will take over Liberty Global’s data centers and use Liberty companies like Virgin Media, Sunrise-UPC, and O2 (if a pending $38bn merger is approved) as anchor tenants.

With Liberty dealing with $28bn in debt, the spun out business can operate more freely, without the tightening noose of repayments.

“Combining Liberty Global’s technical real estate and track record

businesses with Digital Colony’s expertise in digital infrastructure investment creates an exciting platform for growth that will deliver long-term value,” Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries said at the time.

“The proposed joint venture presents significant growth business into a leading European Edge data center operator.”

A huge entrant to the nascent market does not scare Dataplex, Kilbane said. “[With something like not the first. But there’s a market for everybody. In fact, it makes life easier for me because someone else with more money than I can get access to has already proven the very model I’ve been taking around and showing people for the last 18 months.”

Now that the first players are building out their Edge, the clock is ticking on whether it will follow the careful roadmap envisioned by Milovantsev, or if it will follow the Klondike Gold Rush analogy Kilbane referenced earlier. 

26 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

>Connect



Panel How is physical infrastructure responding at the far edge? And what is the opportunity?

CLICK TO WATCH

27 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

>> DCD eBook | Edge

Chapter 4: Characteristics of an Edge colocation solution The Edge is a unique technology, with its own unique set of characteristics and capabilities that shouldn’t be overlooked.

As uptake of the Edge continues to grow, it’s only natural the advent of such a technology will impact how (and where) we design and build our facilities in the future.

Will the FLAP-D (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin) regions continue to rule the data center roost? Or will this change push these geographies to the proverbial Edge, opening up new (potentially cheaper) opportunities elsewhere?

28 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

Connecting the low-latency Edge Shifting data and processing to the Edge will impact how we design and build networks Seb Moss DCD

I

n a world drowning in data, network traffic is already a complex task. But the rise of Edge computing will complicate matters all the more, requiring bigger and smarter networks than ever before.

having to adapt to be able to manage these huge pools of data that are now being pushed around the network,” Waite says. “Before, we saw more centralized data being generated centrally and in large data centers.”

“There’s a lot of content that’s being generated outside the walls of the data center,” Commscope’s hyperscale and cloud solutions architect Alastair Waite explains.

“The Internet of Things, smart cities, etc. – that’s all generating data in a distributed fashion.”

This data is not just being created, but requires a back-andforth response from the Internet.

Workloads like artificial intelligence (AI) or augmented reality (AR) will send data off into the network, but also expect a response – and fast.

While there has always been local data creation, the sheer quantity being produced at the network edge is a new – and rapidly growing – phenomenon. “The network is

That’s a problem for two reasons.

Current bandwidth constraints mean that it is often not technically or financially feasible to send all that data back to a central facility and, even if you do, it may mean too

much latency to be useful.

Here the Edge is presented as a way of killing two birds with one stone. Not only can it process data for a low-latency response, but it can also filter and compress the data that needs to be sent back to the larger data center.

“With AR and virtual reality (VR), latency can make a person sick,” Tilly Gilbert, a senior consultant at telecoms advisory STL Partners, says. “So that application really is reliant on that low latency under 50 milliseconds or so. And then there are those really high bandwidth use cases where processing at the Edge can make them cheaper or more efficient by filtering information out rather than streaming all raw data to

The vast scale of the network overhaul means that cloud providers or other data center companies will not be able to go it alone, and will likely have to partner with network operators > Caroline Puygrenier Interxion

29 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

>> DCD eBook | Edge the centralized cloud.”

This is still mostly a dream of tomorrow. “Today’s networks are not reasonably accessible,” Yuval Bachar, the former principal hardware architect of the Microsoft Azure platform, says.

“If you try to send data from point A to point B, which are not on the same carrier, you’re going to be exchanged somewhere that can be two miles away, but also could be 1,000 miles away. Your latency is completely unpredictable.”

He adds: “So the current network does not give us a predictable latency that we need for the future applications of the Edge. And the current network also cannot handle the very, very large datasets which are being generated at the endpoints.

So there will be a complete hard need for processing units which will sit close to the endpoints to reduce that volume of bandwidth that needs to go back to the cloud.”

We have all heard similar arguments for the Edge for some time, but the shift has been gradual due to the scale of the change and the requirement for a customer to actually make the business proposition viable.

But Bachar is keen to share an actual example of the Edge in action, at another of his former employers: “LinkedIn has a limited global data center footprint,” he says. “As a result, some of the users had a very great experience of extremely fast load. But in some domains, like areas of Europe and Asia Pacific, the experience was not sufficient.”

The problem is that every time the homepage is loaded, it is unique, requiring specific processing for every person, every time they visit the page. “It requires touching the data center constantly,” he says.

“We decided to actually build an Edge platform. We built a micro data center that we’re actually placing in strategic areas, enabling faster response to what the data center can actually provide to the end user.

And by that enable a low latency environment, even though the data center is much further away.”

The Edge is presented as a way of killing two birds with one stone. Not only can it process data for a low-latency response, but it can also filter and compress the data that needs to be sent back to the larger data center a dramatic improvement in the experience that the end users had, specifically in Europe.” It also, he claimed, allowed the company to roll out richer features they would have otherwise not felt comfortable deploying. “But this is an early-stage development.”

Bachar is convinced that this Edge case is not just an edge case, but rather a hint of what is to come. That is, he admits, if people can make the numbers work.

“On paper, we understand what needs to be done,” he says. “But it’s all tied to a business model – if we don’t have a way to monetize it, then the big players will not jump in there, and there are a few very large companies in the world that can actually make this investment.”

If and when that investment in the Edge is made, “whoever is going to take the first step is going to be dominating this market, just like what happened with the cloud,” he predicts.

Here, again, the network demands will be crucial in defining the business model. The vast scale of the network overhaul means that cloud providers or other data center companies will not be able to go it alone, and will likely have to partner with network operators, argues Caroline Puygrenier, director of strategy and business development, connectivity, at Digital Realty’s Interxion.

“With 5G, Edge, new network architectures, satellite constellations,

and so on, we need there to be a greater collaboration between the network operators and the actual cloud service providers,” she says. “We all benefit from that implementation of new technology, it’s not just one segment of the verticals that’s going to develop or pay for the implementation.”

Her company appears to be hoping to cash in on this potential collaboration, investing in AtlasEdge, and installing a former Digital Realty exec as CEO. AtlasEdge is a joint venture between DigitalBridge and telco conglomerate Liberty Global to turn thousands of sites at telco locations into Edge data centers.

There are issues. “Some of the cloud providers are much more interested in getting access to telco networks so they can get access to telco customers, more so than partnering long term,” Mark Thiele, CEO of data center procurement company Edgevana, says. “Many of the initial solutions have huge gaps in opportunity – from a cloud provider standpoint, they’re too expensive, and they are not autonomous from a centralized network.

“But people are working on it.”

When they do solve this challenge, it will have a profound impact on the network of tomorrow, bringing high bandwidth to Edge locations, and offloading processing to those sites.

That doesn’t mean that’s it for the centralized data center, though.

“As this data is being created at the Edge locations, a lot of it is going to have to come back to somewhere,” Commscope’s Waite says. “So it’s going to be extremely important to make sure that your cloud data center, whether that’s in a multitenant data center or within your own premises, has the correct level of bandwidth being provisioned.”

In conversations with cloud and hyperscale providers, it’s “all about 400 gigabits and beyond,” he says. “They’re asking ‘what’s next?’ because they want to be able to deliver that seamless experience that’s really driving the bandwidth at the moment.”. 

He continues: “That’s created

30 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

Bringing the Edge down to size Edge applications aren’t the same as cloud ones, so they don’t need the same hardware Dan Robinson DCD

E

dge computing has been one of the major trends of the past several years, as applications have started to require lower latencies, and the volume of data handled by endpoint systems has grown to the point where streaming it all back to a cloud data center may be too costly, slow and bandwidth-hungry.

But one of the issues with Edge computing is that it is a fairly nebulous term that means different things to different people. Does the edge of the network refer to endpoint devices, or to the communications equipment that links such devices back to the core, or does it cover both of these examples and more?

Gartner, for example, defines Edge computing as solutions that facilitate data processing at or near the source of data generation, but goes on to add that Edge computing serves as the decentralized extension of the campus networks, cellular networks, data center networks or the cloud.

We don’t all need micro data centers For the telecoms industry, Edge computing has been closely identified with the development and deployment of 5G networks, with their goals of handling data rates of gigabits per second, minimal latency, and the ability to support a large number of simultaneously

connected endpoint devices. These 5G requirements are expected to see cellular base stations increase their amount of compute power so that they effectively become miniature data centers.

Meanwhile, enterprises and service providers have also been investing in so-called micro data centers in order to serve the needs of Edge computing. These micro data centers vary in size, but a typical product is the equivalent of a data center rack with power distribution

Anything that requires real time responsiveness, any control systems for robotic systems, industrial factory settings, whatever, all that real stuff that really can’t handle the delay that going back to the cloud gives you > Kurt Michel Veea

units and cooling encased in a protective enclosure, which can be populated with standard rack-mount servers, storage and switch kit.

Such solutions are perfect in a factory setting, for example, where a significant amount of compute power is required to monitor and control production lines, especially where multiple machine vision systems are employed, and fixed wiring is likely to be already in place for communications and power.

However, Edge computing covers such a broad range of applications and use cases that no one solution fits every problem, so a broad spectrum of capabilities is needed to fit every niche, and many will need to be more compact and have different capabilities.

“There’s actually a hierarchy of processing that you would want as you move from the edge of the network all the way into the core,” says Kurt Michel, senior vice president of marketing for Edge infrastructure firm Veea.

Veea develops what it refers to as smart edge nodes, which can start with a deployment of just a single node but can scale by adding more nodes if required, as nodes can communicate with each other via a built-in mesh networking capability. Each node is a tiny box that looks like a Wi-Fi access point, but contains a 64-bit quad-core Arm

31 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

>> DCD eBook | Edge 5G requirements are expected to see cellular base stations increase their amount of compute power so that they effectively become miniature data centers

processor running Linux.

According to Michel, this model emphasizes both computing and connectivity, which is important for Edge applications, but the nodes can operate as if they were a single system via mesh networking.

“These separate nodes, you deploy them, and they will connect to each other. And what they do is they basically create a single virtual, connected compute platform.

And they can connect to all of your different IoT-type devices, so cameras, thermal sensors, air quality sensors, vibration sensors, and the ways they connect might be Bluetooth, or LoRaWAN or ZigBee, or Wi-Fi, or just plain old physical Ethernet,” he says.

Because the hubs operate as a distributed system, any IoT device connected to any of the nodes is visible to and can be accessed by applications running on any of the other nodes. It also means that the devices can share workloads.

“The applications themselves run in Docker containers. And that makes these applications incredibly portable. So you can move them from one node to another node.

And if you find a particular node becoming overwhelmed, you can deploy another node in that location,” Michel explains.

One upshot of all this is that a mesh network can provide a decent amount of aggregate processing power if needed – perhaps as much power as a micro data center – but that is not the way they are intended to be used. Instead, they are aimed at fitting into locations such as smart buildings, retail outlets or outdoor smart city environments, in sites where there may not be the space or power available to support a micro data center.

The range of applications that such devices might be used for is diverse. Michel cites the example of a retail outlet that might have a node connected to a security camera monitoring the entrance to the premises. The device could run a machine learning visual recognition model to detect people entering and whether they are wearing a Covid face mask, and generate an alert if not.

This hypothetical example illustrates some of the justifications for such Edge deployments;

streaming the video back to a cloud data center for processing may introduce unnecessary delays in generating a response, and incur unnecessary costs in network bandwidth.

“Anything that requires real time responsiveness, any control systems for robotic systems, industrial factory settings, whatever, all that real stuff that really can’t handle the delay that going back to the cloud gives you,” Michel says. “You have just got to find the balance, you basically take your tasks, and you break them up into the things that need a rapid response and the things that require deeper processing.”

Up to this point, Edge computing has been enabled by advances in computing that make it possible to add intelligence almost anywhere, and also by the spread of pervasive communications networks. But organizations need to take care when deciding whether Edge or cloud is the best place for data processing to happen, and also when choosing an appropriate platform from the wide choice available. 

32 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

Q&A Stefan Nilsson, Conapto

We talk the importance of Edge location and why we needn’t be restricted to FLAP-D markets Stefan Nilsson Conapto

W

hen it comes to data centers (and life in general) Sweden and the Nordics are best known for their green credentials and seem to have the rest of the world beaten. But what if we told you Sweden is in fact a land of Edge opportunity?

Stefan, firstly why should customers be considering a move to the Edge outside of the traditional FLAP-D (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin) markets?

Basically because Stockholm is cheaper, greener and has the available capacity. Another gamechanger is the fact that Stockholm is one of very few places on the planet where we can offer heat reuse to district heating.

This means we can have a circular environment where we do not just waste the heat from customer equipment, we use it to warm up commercial and residential areas. If we are to meet the global sustainability targets and reduce our total CO2 footprint, companies really need to look for better places to put their data center capacity. Stockholm is one of those places.

Stockholm is already revered for its sustainability credentials, where does it stand with regards to colocation Edge opportunities?

Given all aspects like price on electricity, the amount of renewable energy available, a well-connected city and available capacity I would say that Stockholm is one of the best places to put data center capacity.

In comparison to other geographies is it expensive to achieve Edge colocation in Sweden?

Stockholm has one of the lowest electricity prices in the world comparing other main cities and also factoring in the grid stability, as well as the amount of renewables available, Stockholm is one of the most cost-effective and green cities to choose.

Where does Stockholm compare with other geographies in terms of Edge connectivity?

Stockholm is a very wellconnected city and as an example we have the Nordics biggest IX in Netnode as well as Arelion (former Telia Carrier) which is the world’s number one Internet backbone and well-established dark fiber networks along with a broad array of both international and local Telcos enabling customer to set up the connectivity needed for Edge deployments.

What about in terms of security and geo-risk?

Sweden is ranked as one of the most stable countries in the world when it comes to both political stability and geo risk. Compared to many other bigger cities, Stockholm is one of the safest.

What is the digital expertise like in Sweden/the Nordics?

Sweden is one of the most tech savvy and digitized nations in the world. We have a well-educated workforce and a long track record of producing successful companies such as H&M, IKEA and Volvo. Over the recent years Sweden also has shown its ability to deliver new “tech-brands” brands such as Klarna, Spotify and King.

Finally, what Edge opportunities can Conapto offer specifically?

As we are situated in Stockholm, Conapto can offer city-close lowlatency data center colocation from three main data centers with a total capacity of 30 MW. 10 MW installed and another 20 MW in development with first phase live September 23. 

Interested in

colocation in Stockholm? Read more at www. conapto.com

33 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

>> DCD eBook | Edge

>Talk

DCD>Talks Nordics with Håkan Björklund, Conapto Click here to see the full presentation

Håkan Björklund, CEO, Conpato, joins George Rockett, CEO, DCD for a wide-ranging discussion on the data center market in the Nordics.

34 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com



Further reading E-BOOK

Sweden: The land of green data center opportunity 

ARTICLE

Sweden ranks second most digitally influential country in the world 

WHITEPAPER

Why Stockholm is the given place for your data center 

35 | DCD eBook • datacenterdynamics.com

NEW 20 MW DATACENTER IN STOCKHOLM Welcome to our new Conapto Stockholm 4 South data center adding 20 MW and 6400m2 of computer room space. Together with our existing Stockholm 2 South, this brand new facility will form our upgraded south campus with a total capacity of 24 MW and 7600m2 of computer rooms.

Opening September 2023 this will be the perfect place for your next data center deployment.

Sustainable, Secure and Well-connected!

Find out more on www.conapto.com