Cloudflare inks agreement with EdgeMicro for edge deployments in 30 markets

Edge colocation company EdgeMicro has entered into a customer agreement with Cloudflare  that puts Cloudflare's cloud services in more than 30 EdgeMicro markets. With the agreement announced on Monday, Cloudflare is now an anchor tenant in EdgeMicro's existing Austin, Raleigh, N.C. and Tampa Bay, Fla. facilities, along with the additional 30 U.S. sites.

By working with EdgeMicro, Cloudflare can better deliver its cloud-based, low latency services using infrastructure that's closer to end users than the traditional centralized peering infrastructures that are in service today. Services and applications such as 5G, IoT, augmented reality, virtual reality, and autonomous vehicles require low latency, which has pushed network functions closer to the edge. Service providers, such as CenturyLink, and hyperscale cloud providers are moving core components closer to the edge in order to meet the emerging low latency requirements.

"For companies whose value proposition depends on performance and low latency, it simply doesn't make sense to rely solely on the centralized peering of today's Internet. That involves too much backhauling of data to and from the handful of peering exchanges in the U.S, resulting in undesirable performance," said EdgeMicro CEO Mike Hagan, in a statement. "Traffic needs to be local to support users and their applications, and EdgeMicro's model allows companies to do that faster and simpler than any other method of going to the Edge."

RELATED: Vapor IO rakes in $90 million in Series C funding; announces agreement with Cloudflare

Last month, Cloudflare also announced an edge-related partnership with Vapor IO. Cloudflare will roll out its cloud services on Vapor IO's Kinetic Edge platform across 36 U.S. cities. Vapor IO plans to take its Kinetic Edge to the top 36 metropolitan markets by the end of next year.

The first 20 cities slated for the Kinetic Edge platform are: Austin, Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, Pittsburgh, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.C.