Menu

EDGE FEATURE NEWS

Partners Launch Kinetic Edge Alliance

By Ken Briodagh February 19, 2019

Vapor IO, creators of the Kinetic Edge and a provider of tower-connected edge colocation and interconnection services, recently launched the Kinetic Edge Alliance (KEA), alongside deployment partners Federated Wireless, Linode, MobiledgeX, Packet and StackPath and technical partners Alef Mobitech, Detecon International, Hitachi Vantara, New Continuum Data Centers, Pluribus Networks, and Seagate Technology. The KEA is an industry alliance of leading software, hardware, networking and integration companies committed to driving the broad adoption of compute, storage, access and interconnection at the edge of the cellular network, simplifying edge computing for the masses, according to the announcement.

“Delivering edge computing at scale, across the entire United States, requires a great deal of collaboration,” said Cole Crawford, founder and CEO, Vapor IO. “The Kinetic Edge Alliance provides the vehicle for delivering nationwide edge computing, removing the guesswork from edge deployment and operations that exists today. The Alliance will accelerate the rollout of edge computing, delivering a platform for wireless operators and application providers to deliver new edge-enabled products and services to customers.”

 “By pre-integrating our CBRS controller with the Kinetic Edge, we are able to ensure last mile wireless connectivity in every one of the Alliance’s locations, eventually spanning the entire country,” said Iyad Tarazi, president and CEO, Federated Wireless. “This will unleash a tsunami of edge-native and edge-enhanced applications for Private Networks. Nothing like this has ever been created before and we’re proud to be a part of this movement.”

The Kinetic Edge Alliance was conceived to combine critical infrastructure deployments with enabling edge technologies and expertise, the company said. Targeting the top 30 US metro markets which cover nearly 50 percent of the US population, the Alliance seeks to establish critical mass for nationwide edge computing.

In 2019, the Alliance will focus on the first six Kinetic Edge markets: Chicago, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles and Seattle. Chicago, the first Kinetic Edge city, has two Kinetic Edge sites online right now with a third to come online later in Q1.

KEA Deployment Partners
Deployment Partners will be jointly rolling out equipment and services across the top 30 major metropolitan US markets, beginning with the first six markets in 2019. The Alliance seeks to deploy, in lockstep, all of the key hardware and software infrastructure components that will enable commercial-grade edge computing at scale. The combination of technologies brought together by KEA Deployment Partners reportedly will lead to a uniform infrastructure platform that makes it easy to build edge applications and deploy them to multiple markets. Following are the founding Deployment Partners.

Federated Wireless will bring software and systems for delivering 4G and 5G wireless services over newly-available CBRS spectrum to all Kinetic Edge locations, including a large set of pre-integrated wireless access points, end devices, and network functionality suppliers through its diverse partner program.

“By pre-integrating our CBRS controller with the Kinetic Edge, we are able to ensure last mile wireless connectivity in every one of the Alliance’s locations, eventually spanning the entire country. This will unleash a tsunami of edge-native and edge-enhanced applications for Private Networks. Nothing like this has ever been created before and we’re proud to be a part of this movement,” said Iyad Tarazi, President and CEO, Federated Wireless.

As a cloud provider for more than 800,000 developers worldwide, Linode will extend its cloud computing infrastructure at Kinetic Edge locations. This partnership will enable next generation low-latency applications to operate at the edge of the wireless network. Developers and their teams will enjoy a new level of performance and simplicity to bring their cloud driven experiences to life.

“We are committed to helping developers scale their cloud applications while delivering the performance, value and service they demand. Our participation as a KEA Deployment Partner will enable application developers to extend their proximity to the user edge, creating new experiences that are driven by the cloud and ultra-low latency,” said Carl Williams, Director, Network Strategy & Innovation, Linode.

MobiledgeX will provide developers with automated workload orchestration tooling for the provisioning and management of applications at the edge location nearest to a requesting device. It is a seamless extension of the modern development and deployment practices that developers are using today. The developer access to a network of this scale and distribution is completely new, and so are the application and device experiences that are being created.

“We are thrilled to announce our participation in the Kinetic Edge Alliance that clearly states a predictable deployment of edge capability across the 30 largest metropolitan areas in the USA. We commit to making access to these edge locations and edge services as seamless and easy as possible for any interested businesses, device makers and application developers. Now is the time to begin adopting the next wave of growth as we create one global mobile edge for all to use, and in the USA, the KEA enables a known timeline to move from experimentation today to full market coverage tomorrow,” said Jason Hoffman, CEO, MobiledgeX.

Bare-metal cloud provider Packet helps software developers deploy and operate edge workloads. Starting with a flagship Kinetic Edge deployment in Chicago, Packet will continue its mission of helping developer-driven companies deploy physical infrastructure at global scale, and at the edge.

“Vapor and Packet have a shared vision for the edge, which includes a seamless customer experience connecting infrastructure to wireless access. The Kinetic Edge Alliance provides a much-needed framework to enable cloud-native applications built for the edge, which will accelerate innovation and commercial deployments,” said Ihab Tarazi, CTO, Packet.

StackPath will extend its global platform of edge computing services to the Kinetic Edge, making it easy for developers to deploy containers and VMs at the edge of the cellular network, as well as also deploy serverless scripts via the company’s EdgeEngine.

“StackPath seeks to be the pre-eminent secure edge platform, and that requires becoming as distributed as possible across the globe.. The edge today is analogous to the early days of cloud, and education on the technology and proximity is key to mass adoption. Joining the Kinetic Edge Alliance will help with both and allow us scale even more quickly and take even more people to the edge,” said Lance Crosby, co-founder and CEO, StackPath.

Vapor IO is committed to building tower-connected edge data centers across each of the 30 target markets, offering purpose-built edge colocation, interconnection and fiber-based networking to its partners and customers. These sites form the foundation of the Kinetic Edge, Vapor’s innovative nationwide network of edge data centers.

KEA Technical Partners
KEA Technical Partners participate in Kinetic Edge deployments and enhance the ecosystem by making their unique expertise and enabling technologies available to Kinetic Edge deployments, offering to collaborate with end users and Deployment Partners as they bring new edge infrastructure services to life. The founding Technical Partners are (in alpha order):

Alef Mobitech has developed an edge architecture that makes it easy to deploy MEC (Mutli-Access Edge Computing) applications. By integrating tightly into the telco networks, Alef Mobitech accelerates the building and deployment of edge applications that benefit cellular operators.

“The Edge is here, and the Edge is now—and it is a place for many opportunities. We are extremely excited to deliver our ‘operating system’ to the Kinetic Edge Alliance, which brings together key components to complete the edge ecosystem, enabling us to roll it out nationwide. Together with the Alliance partners, we have the capacity to not only build applications for the next wave of the internet but also create time-to-market advantages for the entire edge Internet landscape, which may very well spark the reconfiguration of the mobile internet,” said Ganesh Sundaram, founder and CEO, Alef Mobitech

Detecon International, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, will support operators in sustainably improving their competitiveness and performance across the entire value chain with the help of innovative technologies such as edge, accelerating their digital transformation and evolution to 5G.

“We support startups and big enterprises in defining and executing their edge strategy with our global expertise in cloud computing and connectivity. Detecon is excited to be a founding member of the Kinetic Edge Alliance and bring to the table world-leading wireless infrastructure, product development and deployment know-how. We are committed to leverage our knowledge and push forward edge computing to build the next generation internet,” said Stefan Wilhelm, CEO, Detecon.

Hitachi Vantara, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd., delivers data center and IoT expertise for the Kinetic Edge, and provides technologies and solutions for data center infrastructure, edge-to-cloud data governance and data-driven insights. Hitachi’s Lumada specifically provides the capabilities to connect, collect, analyze, store and act on data from disparate data sources, allowing customers to make decisions in near real-time.

New Continuum will cross-connect its West Chicago data center with the Kinetic Edge to provide local colocation capacity as well as a software-enabled Internet Exchange Point (IXP). Additionally, New Continuum will deploy Open 19 IT equipment in Kinetic Edge Locations, supporting development and production environments with a pay-as-you-go business model.

“We are excited to join the Kinetic Edge Alliance, supporting what we believe is the next evolution of internet infrastructure. We have worked tirelessly to create the most supportive and fertile environment for edge compute services to grow, and we are genuinely humbled to be able to support the other Alliance partners, who are true innovators in the industry,” said Eli D. Scher, Chairman and CEO, New Continuum.

Pluribus Networks has created a next-generation network fabric for distributed cloud that can span multiple Kinetic Edge (and non-Kinetic Edge) sites, with the ability to manage them as one fabric that is able to stretch geographically with fabric-wide automation, multi-tenancy, granular telemetry and network slicing, with no latency penalty.

“Pluribus Networks’ focus is on radically simplifying network operations and lowering capital costs by providing a unified network fabric, based on white box switches, stretching from central data centers out to compact data centers deployed at Kinetic Edge locations. We are excited to be founding members of the Kinetic Edge Alliance and to collaborate with other industry leaders to accelerate edge compute and the plethora of new applications it will enable,” said Kumar Srikantan, CEO, Pluribus Networks.

Seagate, a provider of data management technologies, will provide technical blueprints and deployment support for end users and partners who require storage at the edge.

“Seagate is excited to partner with the Kinetic Edge Alliance to help define a simple and secure data management architecture for edge computing. There are hundreds of use cases that stand to benefit from edge infrastructure, and the Alliance offers a launch pad to drive edge adoption and bring the power of analytics closer to the data source.  With forty years of data management leadership and innovation, Seagate is building storage products to secure, manage and activate data at the edge,” said Jeff Fochtman, VP, Global Marketing, Seagate.

The Alliance provides its members access to a global networking community that will grow to hundreds of members, connecting edge computing stakeholders with end users and customers in a collaborative environment. The Alliance will also collaborate with the State of the Edge project, helping to advance the group’s vendor-neutral educational mission, as well as its relationship with Edgecon, the leading series of edge-focused events that include Edgecon Vegas, Edgecon Aspen, and Edgecon Barcelona.


The IoT Evolution Expo, and collocated events, IoT Evolution Health, LPWAN Expo, The Smart City Event, and IIoT Conference, will take place Jan. 29 to Feb 1 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Visit IoTEvolutionExpo.com to register now.

Edited by Ken Briodagh
Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. [Free eNews Subscription]

Editorial Director

SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Related Articles

ZEDEDA Certified Edge Computing Associate Certification to Support Growing Uses of Edge Computing

By: Alex Passett    9/6/2023

The new ZCEA certification from ZEDEDA is available through the company's Edge Academy and provides fundamental knowledge about the many benefits of e…

Read More

T-Mobile and Google Cloud Partner to Advance 5G and Edge Compute Possibilities

By: Alex Passett    6/15/2023

T-Mobile and Google Cloud are helping customers embrace next-gen 5G use cases; applications like AR/VR experiences, for example.

Read More

Aptiv PLC Acquires Wind River Systems to Enhance Software-Defined Vehicles

By: Alex Passett    1/5/2023

Dublin-based automotive technology supplier Aptiv PLC has acquired California-based cloud software and intelligent edge company Wind River Systems.

Read More

Driver Safety and Costs Keep Decision Makers Awake

By: Greg Tavarez    12/15/2022

The two things that are top of mind for SMB fleets are driver safety and financial concerns.

Read More

Tomahawk Hosts Microsoft Azure SDK on KxM Body-Worn Edge Processor

By: Stefania Viscusi    11/10/2022

Tomahawk Robotics, a provider of common control solutions, has successfully hosted Microsoft Azure SDK on its KxM edge device.

Read More