The potential for multiple edge cloud owners
On one hand, the creation of the edge cloud can be seen as an extension of CSPs' adoption of public cloud and cloud-native network platforms, which in turn is happening as part of the move to a more virtualized and distributed network architecture and 5G. As more applications are moved into the cloud, operators can start to benefit from a more agile service creation environment than was previously possible.
AT&T is among the most progressive operators following this course, believing that a logical step in its program of network transformation and virtualization will be for edge computing nodes to be located within its own network. At the 2019 Mobile World Congress (MWC), the operator announced that it is working with Microsoft on a proof of concept (PoC) to integrate edge computing with its 5G network and Microsoft Azure cloud services in order to support IoT use cases for retail, healthcare, public safety, entertainment, and manufacturing.
Competing players at the edge
However, whether CSPs are best placed to build and run the edge cloud remains open to question. Interest in the edge is growing among a number of potential stakeholders that are also likely to be in contention for the space. These include public cloud network providers wanting to build their own edge clouds to either sell to CSPs for their networks or sell directly to end users, and other ecosystem partners such as tower companies that see their own assets as being part of the cloud network.
The challenge for internet players such as AWS, Google, and Microsoft when addressing the network edge is in adapting their hyper-scale cloud infrastructures to meet the demands of smaller workloads and the more diverse and often physically constrained environments of the edge cloud, while ensuring consistency and continuity in terms of operating environment, application programming interfaces (APIs), hardware, and functionality.
AWS is the latest public cloud provider to adopt a hybrid computing approach designed to extend its reach into the enterprise and the edge. AWS Outposts, launched in 2018, is a hybrid, scaled-down version of AWS's hyper-scale cloud solution, which provides a fully managed service with on-premises compute, storage, and processing functionality. It is intended to reduce network traffic and enhance local support for applications, such as those demanding low latency, and could potentially support a range of use cases including low-latency 5G in future.
Other interested parties include owners of physical assets suitable for hosting edge cloud infrastructure, such as tower companies. Crown Castle is already actively working in the US with Vapor IO, a developer of edge computing software, to build out an edge network in metropolitan areas across a number of US cities. Micro-data centers located at cell tower base stations and distributed antenna system (DAS) hubs will leverage Crown Castle's metro fiber network, to deliver edge computing services for telecoms operators, cloud providers, and internet companies. The companies plan to mesh the sites together using Vapor IO's software to provide a city-scale edge computing network that Vapor IO calls the Kinetic Edge.
