Part of this plan includes creating more than 100 initial edge compute locations across the US and providing a range of hybrid cloud solutions and managed services. In doing so, customers can advance their next-gen digital initiatives with technology that integrates resilient, low-latency networking with 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," said Paul Savill, senior vice president, product management, CenturyLink. "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 allows businesses and government agencies to use a diverse, global fibre network with edge facilities that delivers their local locations with 5ms of latency. The plan forms part of CenturyLink’s wider strategy to increase access to its services by expanding network colocation services in many key markets to enable customers and partners to run distributed IT workloads close to the edge of the 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."
In July, the company said that it was planning to expand its intercity network by 4.7 million miles of fibre, using its global multi-conduit infrastructure. Once completed CenturyLink will have the largest ultra-low-loss fibre network in North America and comes in direct response to the growing customer demand for high capacity, low-latency data transport.
