Wednesday, April 24, 2019

Vapor IO and Crown Castle bring AWS Direct Connect to edge data centers

Vapor IO and Crown Castle announced a service that seamlessly interconnects Vapor IO’s Kinetic Edge with Amazon Web Services (AWS) via Crown Castle’s high-speed Cloud Connect.

Customers at Vapor IO’s Kinetic Edge can build edge applications that interconnect with AWS over an operator-grade fiber optic network.

“By directly connecting AWS services to applications at the Kinetic Edge, we’re bringing the full power of the cloud to the last mile wireless network, delivering the foundation of a true edge-to-core architecture for developers,” said Cole Crawford, founder and CEO of Vapor IO. “We are aggressively rolling out the Kinetic Edge across a national footprint that will reach over 20 markets by the end of 2020 with a planned deployment of over 80 additional markets. By incorporating AWS Direct Connect into our last mile network, we enable seamless cloud integration for edge applications.”

“Over the past two years, we’ve been working very closely with Vapor IO to build out their Kinetic Edge using our real estate and fiber assets in many US cities,” said Phil Olivero, VP Technology, Crown Castle. “Chicago, the world’s first Kinetic Edge city, proved to be the ideal location for us to connect the Kinetic Edge directly to AWS. As Vapor IO rolls out the Kinetic Edge to new cities, we plan to extend our Cloud Connect to also connect to AWS in those locations. This will empower our mutual customers to build high-performance edge-enabled mobile applications using AWS.”

Kinetic Edge Alliance targets major U.S. metros

Vapor IO, a start-up developing an infrastructure edge computing platform, is leading a new Kinetic Edge Alliance (KEA) to bring together the technology, assets and deployment partners to bring edge capabilities to major U.S. metro markets.

The key idea is to leverage Vapor IO’s Kinetic Edge, an infrastructure architecture that uses software and high-speed connectivity to combine three or more micro data centers that ring a metro area into a single logical data center.

The plan calls for tower-connected infrastructure for edge computing reaching nearly 50% of the nation’s population by the end of 2020. The Alliance will focus on the first six Kinetic Edge markets: Chicago, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles and Seattle. Chicago, the first Kinetic Edge city, has two Kinetic Edge sites online today with a third coming online later in Q1.

KEA includes Deployment Partners — Federated Wireless, Linode, MobiledgeX, Packet and StackPath — and Technical Partners — Alef Mobitech, Detecon International, Hitachi Vantara, New Continuum Data Centers, Pluribus Networks, and Seagate Technology.