Vapor IO launches edge micro datacentre for telecos

Vapor IO launches edge micro datacentre for telecos

Vapor IO has launched a self-contained solution for edge computing - a micro data centre in a 5G-ready wireless base station.

The new solution is a self-contained micro data centre in a wireless base station designed as 5G-ready.

Cole Crawford, CEO and founder of Vapor IO, talking to Capacity said: “The telcos cannot defeat the laws of physics - they can only get so much speed back to the data centre - we are bringing the data centre right to the edge of the network where they need it. You and I have talked extensively before about the fact mobile operators and landowners are in an ideal position to capitalise on the emerging need for low-latency edge-computing. They own the key infrastructure, including tens of thousands of remote tower and base station locations with power and high bandwidth backhaul. 

"These locations are ideal for Vapor Edge technology, and Vapor Edge can help carriers upgrade their infrastructure and business models as they move to a fully virtualised infrastructure with edge computing and 5G capabilities,” Crawford said.

Vapor Edge is a complete platform for edge computing that provides wireless telecom companies with a simple way to deploy and manage cloud servers that are co-located with their base station equipment.

This makes it easy for carriers and wireless base-station landowners to offer cloud compute capabilities in close proximity to the Radio Access Network (RAN), enabling new low-latency applications and creating new business models for these players as they create partnerships with public cloud providers, web-scale companies, and other over-the-top (OTT) providers to deliver edge capabilities.

Vapor Edge for Telecom can also help carriers upgrade their networks by providing a way to house and manage their standard rack-mountable equipment, including rack-mountable cloud servers as well as C-RAN, NFV, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) and other specialised telecom equipment. Vapor Edge for Telecom offers the following to wireless operators:

Vapor Edge for Telecom supports today’s 2G, 3G and 4G technologies, and is available for the coming 5G technologies that will provide extremely high-bandwidth, highly-reliable and very low latency wireless services.

Vapor Edge for Telecom supports the concept of edge computing with or without MEC. Users can add server equipment to Vapor Edge without requiring any changes to base station equipment, but also as base station equipment receives MEC upgrades. Vapor Edge for Telecom interfaces with MEC APIs to coordinate work as well as expose real-time status of the RF network to cloud applications. Equipment providers can also use Vapor Edge for Telecom to extend their MEC capabilities by housing MEC servers in the Vapor Chamber, which will allow for much more expansion capability than exists in standard base station equipment.

As operators virtualise their networks and move their networking logic onto commodity off-the-shelf servers, those servers can be incorporated into Vapor Edge for Telecom. NFV servers can be housed in the Vapor Chamber located in a base station and can be instrumented with OpenDCRE for remote management with Vapor Edge software.




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