DataBank today announced that it has made a $30m strategic investment in EdgePresence, an owner and operator of multi-tenant, modular data centers, providing space, power, bandwidth, and interconnection across key United States markets. DataBank operates 20 data centers, representing 54 megawatts of power capacity and 457k sqft, in the United States.
EdgePresence’s Edge Data Centers are modular, purpose-built data centers, comprehensively and compactly designed. These facilities include critical power, monitoring, physical security, and cooling. Specifically, these data centers are situated in targeted locations at the base of cell towers, key real estate, and enterprise campus locations. EdgePresence’s edge data centers will enable DataBank to colocate its customer workloads at the “far edge” to further reduce latency and improve performance for select applications. This modular capability complements and expands DataBank’s edge strategy. The EdgePresence combination also comes just weeks after DataBank announced a tripling of its footprint with the acquisition of Zayo Group’s zColo data centers.
Modular edge data center providers are gaining tremendous traction. EdgePresence is one of the leaders in the field, which also includes companies like EdgeMicro, Vapor IO (owned by Crown Castle) and Compass Data Centers‘ BitBox platform.
EdgePresence – Use Cases for DataBank
EdgePresence’s modular installations will allow DataBank to deploy geographic-specific colocation solutions. These will be used for specific applications and use cases, including 5G use cases, where traditional data center options are not optimal.
For example, modern retail stores are increasingly using data analytics to better serve products to their customers. However, that data is much more useful in real-time, meaning that it needs to be computed nearby. Therefore, stores such as Amazon Go (a convenience store) will be able to immediately know when a customer grabs an item off of a store shelf. In turn, Amazon Go’s systems can notify procurement when the product needs to be re-stocked.
To be able to solve for use cases like this Amazon Go example, low latency connections are required. Thus, edge data centers need to become more prevalent in Tier-2 and Tier-3 markets across the United States in order to provide for this capability. EdgePresence is a unique offering in the edge data center space. The company addresses innovative use cases with modular data centers in these Tier-2 and Tier-3 markets, throughout primarily the Southeast U.S.
The combination of DataBank’s expanded footprint with zColo facilities and EdgePresence modular solutions will allow DataBank to offer customers almost unlimited geographic flexibility for their IT infrastructure.
Colony Capital – Digital Infrastructure Convergence
DataBank’s investment in EdgePresence is another example of the convergence of digital infrastructure. Further, DataBank will benefit from the digital infrastructure ecosystem of DataBank’s lead investor Colony Capital (NYSE: CLNY).
DataBank and EdgePresence – Part of the Colony Family
EdgePresence has partnered with fellow Colony Capital portfolio company Vertical Bridge, the largest private owner and operator of communications infrastructure and locations in the United States. EdgePresence is currently deploying at over a dozen Vertical Bridge locations. The combination of Vertical Bridge, DataBank, and EdgePresence will accelerate the deployment of innovative infrastructure solutions for cloud, content, and technology customers.
EdgePresence will continue to be run by Doug Recker, the company’s founder, and president. Recker and his existing team will collaborate with DataBank’s leadership team to expand its modular data center solutions.
