Edge Computing Just got Closer

12 July 2021 | 207 Shares

Photo by Taylor Vick on Unsplash

The latest uses of very near-real-time data processing methods at scale have enabled organizations to make applications and services that make decisions in milliseconds. Technologies like Apache Kafka and databases that can slice and dice timescales down to the millionth of a second mean that there are now industrial, financial, and operational advantages to be gained from extremely fast automations.

Capabilities to attenuate machinery in real-time or make financial decisions in a thousandth of a second have the potential to revolutionize organizations. However, the key word here is “potential” — in brief, the rest of the IT stack must be aligned. If powerful processing takes place in a distant cloud, multiple hops create latencies that can essentially void any advantage.

Many organizations are looking to deploy services as close as possible to the end-user to clear that bottleneck. Intelligent systems can identify a user’s location relative to the available services and can optimize delivery by choosing the right node for the best experience.

Doing so requires multiple edge instances but assembling a smorgasbord of different suppliers (each with variations in capabilities) makes the exercise more complex than it could be. Therefore, astute IT procurement professionals tend to choose operators that can deploy in multiple edge locations without complications arising from differing infrastructure stacks.

9 Edge Data Centers, 9 US Markets

9 Edge Data Centers, 9 US Markets

If end-users are based in the US, then an edge data center provider like H5 Data Centers can offer just the spread of potential edge installations that companies need to optimize the user experience by serving from a local facility. H5 Data Centers specializes in providing the infrastructure that enables its users to process near real-time data.

In industries like manufacturing (or heavy IoT/IIoT use-cases) or the financial sector (insurance brokerages, product comparison applications, credit-checks, etc.), H5 Data Centers has low-latency, high bandwidth infrastructure close by.  It operates 14 facilities in the US, with dark fiber capacity, fast storage and compute, and optimized connectivity. That places it in a commanding position to fully support this new generation of time-dependent data collection, processing, and automation that are changing many verticals.

By getting close to customers, the data center facilities reduce hop counts and improve company-to-user response times. There are also options from H5 for direct connections to the major public clouds, so workloads optimized on Azure, GCP, AWS, et al. will perform at their best.

An edge data center is a perfect host for content delivery networks (CDNs) that need multiple, localized nodes to deliver always-on, reliable media and content, and data stream processing can take place close to where it is consumed. An edge location offers failover and service replication capacity for larger-scale service providers (such as MSPs), which means the paying customer will always have access to mission-critical systems and support.

Instead of assembling different DC operators’ services and patching together a widely distributed deployment, users of H5 Data Centers get one provider of support, one call away. There’s hand-on service when required, and the company offers multiple options from turn-key colocation space through powered shells and build-to-suit data centers. A dedicated team helps with capital and operating expense management, so you’re guaranteed to find a mix that suits your needs and your resources.

Operating an advanced network of service provision is complex enough without multiple panes-of-glass and support sources. Providing a smooth, homogeneous service to end-users, needs an underpinning framework that requires little maintenance. That’s where an operator like H5 Data Centers excels. It provides replication of services and capacity that’s always close to end-users yet operates multiple nodes nationwide.

In the future, as industries change, an edge deployment strategy can be adapted quickly in support of your organization’s ongoing strategy. Whether it is a short-term investment or a longer-term full-service deployment, H5 Data Centers has the capacity and infrastructure your business needs.

With edge computing close to end-users and high-end infrastructure that provides reliable, fast, and low-cost options, your ongoing needs are met. For automated decision-taking, fast ingress of data, real-time processing, and storage, the edge computing paradigm is now available at reasonable rates.

To learn more about H5 Data Centers, the company’s facilities, and support ethos, get in touch with your local representative to discuss specific requirements.