CenturyLink invests several hundred million dollars in edge compute strategy

News and Business

Hybrid networking, cloud connectivity and security solutions provider CenturyLink, Inc is announcing the rollout of a major edge-focused strategy. This is beginning with a several hundred-million-dollar investment to build out and support edge compute services.

This effort includes creating more than 100 initial edge compute locations across the USA, and providing a range of hybrid cloud solutions and managed services. The aim is to enable customers to advance their next-gen digital initiatives with technology that integrates high performance, low-latency networking with leading cloud service provider platforms in customised configurations.

“Customers are increasingly coming to us for help with applications where latency, bandwidth and geography are critical considerations,” commented Paul Savill, senior vice president, Product Management, CenturyLink (pictured). “This investment creates the platform for CenturyLink to enable enterprises, hyperscalers, wireless carriers, and system integrators with the technology elements to drive years of innovation where workloads get placed closer to customers’ digital interactions.”

This expansion is designed to allow businesses and government agencies to leverage a highly diverse, global fibre network with edge facilities that can serve their local locations within 5 milliseconds of latency. With this infrastructure, companies will be able to complete the linkage from office location to market edge compute aggregation to public cloud and datacentres with redundant and dynamically consumable network.

“Digital transformation is gaining momentum as enterprises across all verticals look to technology to improve operational efficiency and enhance the customer experience,” added Melanie Posey, research vice president and general manager at 451 Research. “As business processes become increasingly distributed, data-intensive, and transaction-based, the IT systems they depend on must be equally distributed to provide the necessary compute, storage and network resources to far-flung business value chains.”

CenturyLink says its thousands of secure technical facilities, combined with its network of 450,000-global route miles of fibre, expertise in high-performance cloud networking, and extensive cloud management expertise, make this investment in the rapidly emerging edge compute market a natural evolution for the company.

CenturyLink announced in July 2019 the completion of the first phase of an overbuild fibre network, completed in June, which connects more than 50 major cities throughout the US and represents another powerful asset in CenturyLink’s vast global fibre-optic network. This includes a purpose-built long- haul network and dense metro networks designed to stay ahead of the growing data demand. The second phase of this expansion will include areas in Europe and will be completed by early 2021.

CenturyLink today connects to over 2,200 public and private datacentres and over 150,000 on-net, fibre-fed enterprise buildings.

For more information, visit www.centurylink.com/