EdgeMicro to Launch Its Next Five Edge Data Centers by Year’s End

EdgeMicro, one of the handful of startups building out networks of small-form factor edge data centers, this week announced its next five locations in the US: Cleveland, Indianapolis, Memphis, Houston, and Pittsburgh.

Along with Vapor IO, Compass EdgePoint, and others, EdgeMicro is part of a new crop of companies launched in recent years to chase the business opportunity in building edge data centers in markets underserved by the largest data center providers for content, cloud, and telecommunications companies that need to reduce network latency for their end users and cut their data transport costs.

Cloudflare, for example, is using both EdgePoint and Vapor to extend its network to more locations in the US to it can better serve users of its security, CDN, and serverless cloud services. Akamai, the world’s largest CDN operator, is an EdgePoint customer.

Without using edge data centers in Houston, for instance, internet traffic in the metro has to be served from the nearest major network hub in Dallas – some 240 miles away. Building a smaller hub in Houston improves performance for end users there as well as removing the cost of moving data between Dallas and Houston for content companies.

EdgePoint already has three sites running, in Austin, Raleigh, and Tampa, which it brought online last year. The infrastructure is housed inside container-like enclosures, including all the typical data center components, such as IT racks, networking, power, and cooling equipment.

The company expects to launch its next five locations in the fourth quarter.