How Edge Data Centers are Used by eBay, National Australia Bank, Symfact, Ori Industries, and DediPath: Case Studies

Edge computing is everywhere, from 5G devices to deploying smart homes and autonomous vehicles. Edge technology’s edge data centers also help collate data by connecting distributed facilities to hyperscale data centers.

The installations can also work as separate units, independent of the main servers. They can help IT infrastructures against cyberattacks and localize information during downtimes.

See below how five organizations benefited from edge data centers in different sectors: compliance management, financial services, e-commerce, cloud computing, and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS):

1. Symfact

Symfact is in the business of compliance and contract management with an upper hand in risk analysis, entity management, and contract enforcement.

Symfact’s flagship product is deployed on a single configurable, on-premises technology platform. Rather than building its very own cloud infrastructure, Symfact uses a third-party edge data center solution, DartPoints, to store and backup client data.

“With DartPoints, we can guarantee customers a compliant infrastructure, complete with the flexibility to match their preferences and requirements for redundancy and backups,” said Harry Angel, director of North America at Symfact.

“Having an edge center solution enables us to give clients exactly what they need from an IT infrastructure standpoint. By relying on DartPoints to handle the cloud infrastructure and to support Symfact and their clients, Symfact frees up their time and money to focus on tasks and functions to help grow the business more directly.”

Industry: Compliance management

Edge data center provider: DartPoints

Outcomes:

• Access to public and private backups, managed firewall, and highly encrypted vaults for data storage
• Ensuring HIPAA compliance while customizing data protection plans for clients
• Better customer experience
• Collecting and processing data across cycles, from sales to client support

2. National Australia Bank

National Australia Bank operated on power-intensive data centers, accounting for major carbon offsets in the atmosphere. NAB wanted a total digital transformation of its financial mechanism while optimizing cost, modifying core banking strategy, and reducing risks stemming from legacy data environments.

NAB had an in-house data center to configure clientele needs, but in a bid to maximize its governance structure, they wanted to move away from building to simply coordinating their data center needs.

NAB partnered with Digital Realty to establish a customized edge data center that not only reduces its carbon footprint but creates an “all primary” data storage system. The type was an upgrade from NAB’s previously deployed primary-secondary model: storing primary data at the Knox site while the redundant chunks at the Melbourne site.

“In modern banking, information technology (IT) systems are mission critical, and data centers are the fundamental building blocks of a robust, resilient IT environment,” said the data team at NAB.

Industry: Financial services

Edge data center provider: Digital Realty

Outcomes:

• Reduced downtime with an updated security infrastructure
• Glitch-free updates and product releases
• Lower carbon emissions than other tech counterparts
• Establishing an edge data center running on renewables, with rainwater harvesting, a 2N power distribution, and better adherence to disaster norms
• 99.99% uptime across the edge center

3. eBay

eBay is the home to more than 138 million active buyers, with 109 million monthly visitors. Storing data of millions of users isn’t possible without multiple data centers across countries. The company wanted to adopt sustainable data centers to process client info while ensuring cost competitiveness.

Bloom Energy produces solid fuel cells for cleaner power generation. With Vapor IO’s Vapor Chamber, Bloom Energy reconfigured the floor layout of eBay’s center to create a biogas-driven data house using Bloom Energy’s flagship cells.

“This is the first step on a dramatic journey that will change this industry,” said Peter Gross, VP at Bloom Energy.

“Technology-led innovation is changing retail and revolutionizing how people shop and pay,” stated eBay President and CEO John Donahue. “We also want to revolutionize how shopping is powered. Running our data centers primarily on reliable, renewable energy, we intend to shape a future for commerce that is more environmentally sustainable at its core.”

Industry: e-commerce

Edge data center provider: Bloom Energy and Vapor IO

Outcomes:

• Renewables-based power engine to reduce impacts of climate change
• Lower power requirements than traditional data centers
• Generous compute efficacy with minimal space requirements

4. Ori Industries

Ori Industries is known for creating OGE, a one-of-a-kind distributed cloud structure for hybrid teams. Ori employed EdgeConneX to create a distributed edge center system where OGE can run hassle-free.

“We believe the way software and physical infrastructure interact needs to be autonomous, smart, and flexible,” said Dick Theunissen, MD at EdgeConneX. “The next generation of cloud is driven by collaboration. With EdgeConneX, we are expanding our footprint across Europe and new infrastructure providers to help a growing number of developers build the exciting latency-sensitive applications of tomorrow.

“Developers in Amsterdam, Munich, and Warsaw can locally access Ori’s platform with the services in our edge data centers. Developers need the ability to dictate where their edge is and simplify workload deployment among distributed locations. That’s exactly how EdgeConneX can empower the edge for cloud service providers.”

Industry: Cloud computing

Edge data center provider: EdgeConneX

Outcomes:

• Developing an infrastructure-agnostic data center by combining the best of both products
• Better orchestration of network resources and storage over distributed centers
• Smooth workload run, right from cloud to network edge
• Integration of multiple computing resources in one place to simplify product life cycle and ease the pressure off developers

5. DediPath

DediPath is an IaaS provider offering self-hosting solutions, network paths, virtual servers, and unmetered bandwidth through enterprise-grade hardware. The company was looking for an edge data center vendor to co-locate its bare-metal solutions across the U.S.

DediPath picked EdgePresence due to its N+1 infrastructure capabilities and layer two connectivity with urban centers and client spaces.

“The industry is trending towards a more distributed infrastructure, leveraging network solutions that bring data closer to users, drastically improving capabilities and performance,” said Doug Recker from DediPath. “We’re excited to be the company bringing those solutions to clients today while building fortified edge capabilities for tomorrow.”

Industry: IaaS and hosting

Edge data center provider: EdgePresence

Outcomes:

• Low latency and high bandwidth connectivity across DediPath and client servers
• Cost-effective data centers with efficient power utilization, standard fire and disaster recovery system, and physical security
• Flexibility to switch between single and multi-tenant structures
• Micro data centers offering collective security to edge points of presence (PoPs) spread across the U.S.