Vapor IO debuts Kinetic Grid -- edge-to-edge with national backbone

Vapor IO introduced its Kinetic Grid platform, an intelligent infrastructure service with an edge-to-edge national backbone.

The service combines colocation, networking and interconnection infrastructure into a nationwide platform for modern applications. Vapor IO has entered into strategic partnerships with Zayo and VMware.

Vapor IO said its service will offer  real time telemetry for contextualizing resources, responding to actual and predicted failure conditions, as well as hypercomposing resource flows for implementing the Open Grid.

Vapor IO also operates its Kinetic Edge Exchange, a high-speed, software-defined interconnection services platform at the edge. Customers can cross-connect, via software, to other networks on Vapor IO’s platform. 

https://www.vapor.io/resources/blog/introducing-the-kinetic-grid-an-edge-to-edge-platform-for-the-internet-we-need/

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DE-CIX interconnects with Vapor IO’s Kinetic Edge platform

DE-CIX has established interconnections with Vapor IO’s Kinetic Edge platform. 

The interconnections give edge applications global reach via thousands of networks that interconnect through DE-CIX Dallas and DE-CIX Chicago, as well as via extended reach to DE-CIX New York, where those same applications can access efficient network routes through DE-CIX’s GlobePEER Remote service. DE-CIX’s global neutral interconnection ecosystem reaches all the way from the DE-CIX IXs in North America, to Europe, the Middle East, and India, and on to Southeast Asia, connecting close to 2200 networks overall. DE-CIX interconnection services are available today from Vapor IO’s Kinetic Edge locations in Dallas and Chicago using Vapor IO’s web portal and its software-controlled Kinetic Edge Exchange platform.

“Edge applications aren’t just for local processing. They are often dependent on national and global reach, which is why our customers are excited to enrich their edge connectivity via access to thousands of networks on the DE-CIX platform,” said Cole Crawford, founder & CEO of Vapor IO. “DE-CIX is an exceptional addition to our service offering. Customers can leverage DE-CIX interconnection capabilities through our SDN platform, enabling autonomous, software defined interconnection that enables best-in-class data delivery to content, high-volume networks, and service providers in local, national and international markets via a single Kinetic Edge port connection to DE-CIX.”

“We’re excited to offer DE-CIX Chicago’s and DE-CIX Dallas’s local and remote peering capabilities through the Kinetic Edge platform. Accessibility on the Kinetic Edge platform provides SDN access to DE-CIX IXs, enabling Vapor’s edge data center and network customers the ability to reach our ecosystem of networks,” adds Ed d’Agostino, General Manager of DE-CIX North America. “Through the established NNIs with Vapor’s network in Chicago and Dallas, in conjunction with their SDN capabilities, DE-CIX’s 2021 goal of enabling greater edge access to DE-CIX’s North American exchanges is firmly in motion. Vapor’s Kinetic Edge is an ideal platform to enable connectivity from the edge to our core IX infrastructure.

https://www.de-cix.net

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Vapor IO raises $90M to build up its Kinetic Edge platform

Vapor IO closed $90 million in Series C funding for building its "Kinetic Edge" platform for edge colocation and networking services. The funding round included an investment by private equity firm Berkshire Partners and Crown Castle.

Vapor IO’s Kinetic Edge platform is a fully-integrated system of edge colocation, networking, and exchange services that operates at city-scale in key metropolitan regions. The Kinetic Edge uses custom data centers, dedicated fiber, and networking services to deliver a complete solution for infrastructure edge computing.

Vapor IO already has installations underway in Chicago, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, and Dallas. The company has another 16 markets in pre-construction, most of which it expects to build out in 2020. The company plans to deliver its Kinetic Edge platform to the top 36 U.S. metropolitan markets by the end of 2021.

“The Third Act of the Internet requires that we build out edge computing infrastructure as quickly as possible,” said Cole Crawford, founder and CEO of Vapor IO. “By deploying Vapor IO’s Kinetic Edge exchange, colocation, and networking services in the top U.S. markets, we provide a platform to deliver low-latency edge capabilities at the intersection of the wireline and wireless networks. With a total of 36 multi-site markets coming online over the next 24 months, we expect to be the largest provider of edge colocation, edge networking, and edge exchange services in close proximity to the last mile networks.”

In addition, Vapor IO announced that Cloudflare will roll out its cloud services via the Kinetic Edge platform across 36 U.S. cities.

https://www.vapor.io/vapor-io-raises-90-million-to-build-out-its-kinetic-edge-platform/

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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

Thursday, February 14, 2019  Data Centers, Vapor  

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.

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Vapor IO adds former Crown Castle exec to its team

Vapor IO, which is developing tower-connected edge colocation services, announced the addition of Alan Bock to its executive team, as vice president of business development, telecommunications. He will focus on carrier relationships as well as relationships in emerging verticals that include autonomous vehicles and smart cities.

Bock is a former VP at telco infrastructure provider Crown Castle. Previously, Bock served in various roles at Crown Castle International, including vice president of corporate development and strategy where he led Crown’s M&A efforts, including the initial investment in Vapor IO. Prior to Crown Castle, Bock held various managerial and finance roles at Cypress Semiconductor and XO Communications. Bock was also recently on the board of directors of the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), a leading consortium of wireless infrastructure in the US.

Vapor IO’s Kinetic Edge platform delivers a new category of colocation which will move the intersection of the wireless and wireline networks much closer to the end user. The company recently announced its Series C funding led by Berkshire Partners, with participation from current investor Crown Castle. The funding will be used to build out the nation’s largest collection of colocation data centers and interconnection facilities at the edge of the wireless network.

“Vapor IO’s Kinetic Edge is the fastest-growing platform of tower-connected edge data centers. We expect to be in over 100 locations by 2020 and we are on track to become the largest provider of edge colocation and interconnection services,” said Cole Crawford, founder and CEO of Vapor IO. “Alan’s experience and knowledge of the wireless and edge computing industries is second to none, and we are thrilled to have him on the team at Vapor IO to partner with the wireless carriers and help build out our application ecosystem.”

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Vapor IO adds to Advisory Board: Strickland, Mockapetris and Tarazi #datacenters

Vapor IO, a start-up specializing in edge computing and edge data centers, announced three new members of its advisory board: Robert Strickland, former CTO of Leap Wireless and Cricket Communications (acquired by AT&T), Paul Mockapetris, inventor of DNS, and Ihab Tarazi, former CTO of Equinix.

Last year, Vapor IO announced Project Volutus, an edge co-location and data center as a platform service that will stitch together a network of fully-managed micro data centers at the base of cell towers.

“Interest and demand for edge computing and Project Volutus continues to accelerate. As we push forward to roll out our first Kinetic Edge cities, we’re thrilled to welcome Robert, Paul and Ihab as advisors and look forward to working closely with them. Each has uniquely pioneered success and innovation within their respected fields time and again, and we look forward to their valuable insights,” said Cole Crawford, founder and CEO of Vapor IO.

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Vapor Develops Optimized Data Center for Edge Locations

Vapor IO introduced a new data center platform for building out IoT and edge environments. The solution combines an optimized rack architecture with software based on Open Data Center Runtime Environment (OpenDCRE), an open source protocol created by Vapor IO for monitoring and responding to data center hardware, software and environmental characteristics in hybrid and edge environments.


“The cloud as we know it is changing,” said Cole Crawford, co-founder and CEO of Vapor IO.  “For the last decade, it’s been dominated by large, centralized data centers. But there is an emerging class of applications—including IoT, virtual and augmented reality, and mobile apps—where centralized data centers simply won’t work because compute, storage and network capacity must be near the application or device. With Vapor Edge, we’re paving the way for a truly decentralized data center and enabling cloud computing at the edge.”

Vapor Edge consists of specialized software  for remote operation and workload management, as well as patented hardware designs which are optimized for edge environments and manufactured by partners under license. Included are:

• Vapor CORE: Operators use Vapor CORE software to remotely monitor and administer their Vapor Edge environments. Vapor CORE spans all of the centralized data center and edge machines, ingests hardware telemetry in real time, and provides operators with a way to remotely view and manage their edge capabilities.
• Vapor Compass: Operators use Vapor Compass software to build highly-automated command-and-control policies for managing workloads in distributed edge environments. Vapor Compass makes real-time optimization decisions, including rescheduling workloads onto edge nodes or centralized data centers, based on policies, including latency and cost.
• Vapor Chamber: Optionally, operators use Vapor Chamber designs to build out the physical environment for Vapor Edge. The Vapor Chamber is a revolutionary circular racking system for servers, designed by Vapor IO, which is licensed to manufacturers who sell and distribute the system. The Vapor Chamber is tightly integrated with Vapor Edge software, and is ideal for use in more hostile edge environments, such as in cell towers and on rooftops. It is self-contained, extremely energy efficient and well-suited for remote operation. Customers can also retrofit existing equipment into a Vapor Edge environment, with or without Vapor Chambers.

http://www.vapor.io

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Vapor IO Ups its Open Data Center Runtime Environment

A new release of the Vapor Open Data Center Runtime Environment (OpenDCRE) adds supports for AppliedMicro X-Gene server family and BASELAYER Anywhere modular data center (MDC) products. 

Vapor's OpenDCRE is an infrastructure automation and DevOps platform for connecting IT and physical infrastructure. These partnerships highlight Vapor IO’s goal of furthering development of hyper converged data center architectures within the open source community.

OpenDCRE provides a secure, RESTful API for monitoring and completely controlling your entire data center and IT equipment. It can be used as an open platform for monitoring and managing data center hardware, software and environmental characteristics. The OpenDCRE API enables easy integration with third-party monitoring, management and orchestration providers. An alternative to proprietary interfaces and custom silicon, it provides a simple, curl-able interface for common and custom DevOps tasks. There are a wide variety of possible applications, deployments, physical mounting strategies, and network connectivity options for which Vapor IO is working to foster community support.

“Data center environments are becoming increasingly complex and filled with a myriad of hardware and software solutions and tools from various vendors. In order for IT organizations to succeed they need to run efficient and agile environments. The collection of resources that make up today’s data centers must work together seamlessly, but at the same time exist as independent components so they can be replaced, repaired or upgraded as necessary,” said Cole Crawford, founder and CEO, Vapor IO. “Our mission is to take the disaggregated data center, and turn it into a highly efficient, well-connected but intentionally decoupled IT system.”

http://www.vapor.io/

Vapor IO Secures Series A Funding for Hyper Modular Data Center

Thursday, December 03, 2015  Data Centers, Funding, Start-ups, Vapor IO  No comments

Vapor IO, a start-up based in Austin, Texas, announced a Series A funding round for its intelligent, hyper modular data center solution.  The funding was led by Goldman Sachs, with participation from AVX Partners, but the amount was not disclosed.

Vapor IO is focused on new design for maximizing density and energy efficiency in data center design.

“For the past nine months we’ve been singularly focused on building a telemetry optimized data center analytics company whose mission is to modernize today’s legacy infrastructure and design,” said Cole Crawford, founder and CEO of Vapor IO. “Recognizing the need for innovation and the now standard deployment of open source technologies, we’re thrilled to partner with Goldman Sachs and AVX Partners to drive full stack data center automation in an industry that has traditionally bifurcated the physical assets from the application.”

http://www.vapor.io

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Vapor IO Secures Series A Funding for Hyper Modular Data Center

Vapor IO, a start-up based in Austin, Texas, announced a Series A funding round for its intelligent, hyper modular data center solution.  The funding was led by Goldman Sachs, with participation from AVX Partners, but the amount was not disclosed.

Vapor IO is focused on new design for maximizing density and energy efficiency in data center design.

“For the past nine months we’ve been singularly focused on building a telemetry optimized data center analytics company whose mission is to modernize today’s legacy infrastructure and design,” said Cole Crawford, founder and CEO of Vapor IO. “Recognizing the need for innovation and the now standard deployment of open source technologies, we’re thrilled to partner with Goldman Sachs and AVX Partners to drive full stack data center automation in an industry that has traditionally bifurcated the physical assets from the application.”

http://www.vapor.io

Vapor IO Releases Open Source Platform for Server and Rack Mgt

Wednesday, November 18, 2015  Data Center, Open, Vapor IO  No comments

Vapor IO, a start-up offering a hyper modular data center solution, introduced its Open Data Center Runtime Environment (DCRE) - an open source platform for data center rack and server management.

Vapor IO, which earlier this year introduced its hyper collapsed, disaggregated  data center solution, developed this new OpenDCRE software to simplify data center infrastructure communication. The solution exposes current generation interfaces to data center operators, system and devops administrators, thereby simplifying the programming needed to start automating the physical infrastructure itself.

Vapor IO said OpenDCRE is being released as an open source alternative to proprietary interfaces and custom silicon. This ensures that when a user interacts with their data center, they are communicating over a community owned interface and standard. OpenDCRE is designed to support all data center environments supporting HPE Cloudline and other OCP platforms. OpenDCRE replaces the need for out of band management networks saving users thousands of dollars per rack. Additional features of the product include SSL support, analog sensor and power control support and a simple RESTful API running on Raspberry Pi.

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Vapor IO Releases Open Source Platform for Server and Rack Mgt

Vapor IO, a start-up offering a hyper modular data center solution, introduced its Open Data Center Runtime Environment (DCRE) - an open source platform for data center rack and server management.

Vapor IO, which earlier this year introduced its hyper collapsed, disaggregated  data center solution, developed this new OpenDCRE software to simplify data center infrastructure communication. The solution exposes current generation interfaces to data center operators, system and devops administrators, thereby simplifying the programming needed to start automating the physical infrastructure itself.

Vapor IO said OpenDCRE is being released as an open source alternative to proprietary interfaces and custom silicon. This ensures that when a user interacts with their data center, they are communicating over a community owned interface and standard. OpenDCRE is designed to support all data center environments supporting HPE Cloudline and other OCP platforms. OpenDCRE replaces the need for out of band management networks saving users thousands of dollars per rack. Additional features of the product include SSL support, analog sensor and power control support and a simple RESTful API running on Raspberry Pi.

“Data centers have proven to be nothing short of problematic,” said Cole Crawford, founder and CEO of Vapor IO. ”This is primarily due to poorly integrated systems, legacy software and hardware, and the disjointed approach the industry takes to building out data center environments. As IT prepares to support edge based computing, it is imperative we manage and orchestrate our infrastructure as a whole with no prejudice as to where or how many data centers are employed to support our workloads. This is a large feat and we’re thrilled to have support from partners like Future Facilities and Romonet as we move forward.”
OpenDCRE is now available for download and has already generated support from partners such as Future Facilities and Romonet.
 
http://www.vapor.io/products/open-dcre/

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