With all the futuristic talk about Internet of Things (IoT) applications and corresponding workloads, we thought it was a good time to sit down with 451 Research and look at what’s happening here and now. In this article, we summarize the key points of the brief, entitled The Case for Colocation in Enterprise Edge IT Strategy.
The Edge is Already Here
In fact, as several 451 Research surveys show, many enterprises are already deploying or testing IoT-enabled projects. With millions of devices now generating data, we at Stream Data Centers are seeing a growing number of decision makers grappling with where best to store and analyze data.
With the application of ‘the edge’ still being quite fluid throughout the whole data center, the statistics demonstrate that modern enterprises are ripe for change. Although around 45% of IT managers are storing and processing IoT data with in-house, non-cloud infrastructure, only 36% say they will stick with their current setup over the next two years. With this shift from on-premise to third-party data center comes a significant question: how can existing, purpose-built facilities actually fit into my company’s edge strategy?
The Role of Tier 2 Markets
The basic concept of edge computing is to push data processing out as close as possible to where it is being produced. This often inspires misconceptions of edge data centers as only being tiny facilities out on the fringe. However, the data centers that can realistically support this trend right now are those in the Tier 2 sub-markets of large, metropolitan areas.
At Stream, we have made it part of our mission to develop and lease purpose-built infrastructure in these types of areas, which are still relatively close to the metropolitan cores. Here are some examples of our facilities – note the Tier 2 market locations:
And the list goes on, especially if we include opportunities relevant to Stream’s expansive national commercial real estate portfolio. The point we’re trying to make here is that, regardless of the size of these facilities, their location in Tier 2 markets is what counts. The key benefit of incorporating them into an enterprise edge strategy is that they can be close to where the IoT data is generated while still retaining multiple network options and high-speed cloud connectivity. It’s an optimal solution and one that drives significant savings and peace of mind from security, cost, networking and geographic redundancy perspectives.
Download the Brief
Over the next several years, the question of where best to store and analyze edge data will drive multiple business decisions. Issues of security, cost and latency are likely to remain challenging, particularly as enterprises seek to store/process some of the data in the public cloud or use advanced analytics that require connecting to public cloud or software-as-a-service providers. Many enterprise requirements can be answered by leveraging colocation in order to improve connectivity and latency while still meeting security and compliance requirements for many firms. We go into much more depth in our brief, completed in partnership with 451 Research. Download it and feel free to contact us with your questions.
