EdgeConneX Opening Three Florida Edge Data Centers

EdgeConneX recently announced the building of three new "edge data centers" in Tallahassee, Jacksonville, and Miami, Florida, all set to go live at the end of the second quarter.

EdgeConneX specializes in serving content providers and content delivery networks in underserved metro areas often overlooked by internet infrastructure companies. Its data centers host bandwidth-intensive, latency-sensitive content and applications at the edge of the network. The company has announced plans to add 10 new data centers this year but has been quiet about details.

Each edge data center is dense in power, scalable to more than 3.2 megawatts of power, and capable of delivering 20-plus kilowatts per rack. The company also offers wireless solutions, which is where its roots were prior to expanding to an edge colocation focus.

The three Florida data centers are all in major population hubs with one in the south part of the state, another located centrally, and the third in the Panhandle further north.

Tallahassee is the most overlooked metro in the trio. The Florida Panhandle is an area that has suffered a few direct hits from hurricanes, making it not very conducive for data center activity. However, it is a fast-growing metro area in need of content serving.

Miami is a major data center hub that also serves Latin America, and Jacksonville is a growing interconnection spot. Allied Fiber recently completed a Miami-to-Jacksonville fiber route; Cologix acquired Jacksonville player Colo5 last year. Data center provider Peak 10 also has a presence there.

“Florida’s information technology sector continues to grow, and companies like EdgeConneX are helping to diversify that sector,” EdgeConneX Enterprise Florida President and CEO Bull Johnson said in a press release. “These data centers in Tallahassee, Jacksonville, and Miami will create important capital investments in those regions and further strengthen Florida’s position as a business super-state. Florida is the third-largest state for high-tech establishments, and nearly 250,000 Floridians are employed in the technology sector today.”

Clint Heiden, chief commercial officer at EdgeConneX, added: “The domestic demand for content has outgrown the internet infrastructure that exists today. EdgeConneX is rapidly building infrastructure in new markets to bring the internet local across the country, creating the Internet of Everywhere.”

Heiden also said the internet is served from one of nine peering points across the U.S. today, a setup that works fine for email but not for increasing content consumption in metros.

In October 2014, more than 72 million Americans streamed 7.1 billion minutes of sports content over smartphones in addition to close to 80 million streaming 8.6 billion minutes of content, according to Nielsen. Smartphone usage rose from 30 percent in 2010 to 75 percent by the end of 2014.