AWS Edge Computing Updates: New Hardware & Local Zones

During its concluding re:Invent keynote, Amazon Web Services highlighted advancements in edge computing. The company introduced two more compact appliances for its Outposts offering, which initially provided AWS as a fully managed service and hardware directly within customers’ data centers using a sizable rack. These new, smaller units enable users to also deploy them in locations like retail stores or office spaces. AWS fully manages these appliances, which provide 64 processing cores, 128GB of memory, and 4TB of local NVMe storage.

Furthermore, the company broadened the availability of its Local Zones, essentially smaller extensions of established AWS regions. While more costly to operate, these zones deliver reduced latency access within metropolitan areas. This service debuted in Los Angeles in 2019, and as of today, is also available in preview in Boston, Houston, and Miami. Expansion will soon include Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, and Seattle. It is worth mentioning that Google is pursuing a similar strategy with its Mobile Edge Cloud.

Image: AWS

The overarching concept – a direction shared by Google, Microsoft, and other industry players – is to extend AWS capabilities to the edge in a diverse range of configurations.

AWS CEO Andy Jassy accurately pointed out that AWS has long anticipated that the majority of organizations would eventually transition to the cloud. Consequently, AWS initially prioritized cloud services over hybrid solutions. He contends that AWS observed other companies attempt and fail to develop successful hybrid offerings, largely because customers desired a unified control plane across all edge nodes and within the cloud environment. Jassy asserts that existing solutions from competing vendors did not gain significant adoption due to this limitation (although competitors would likely dispute this claim).

The initial outcome of this approach was VMware Cloud on AWS, which enabled customers to utilize their existing VMware software and tools on AWS infrastructure. However, this primarily focused on migrating on-premises services to the cloud.

Image: AWS

With Outposts, AWS launched a completely managed edge solution capable of running AWS infrastructure within customers’ own data centers. This represents a significant evolution for AWS, and the fact that the company concluded its keynote with a focus on hybrid approaches – regardless of its preferred terminology – demonstrates its recognition of the demand for these types of services. AWS’s strategy centers on extending AWS into the edge, and it appears most of its competitors concur with this approach. Microsoft initially attempted this with Azure Stack, but reportedly saw limited success, and has since revised its strategy with Azure Arc. Google, in the meantime, is heavily invested in Anthos.