EdgeConneX® has announced the availability of Amazon Web Services (AWS) Direct Connect in its Portland Edge Data Center®. With AWS Direct Connect, companies in the Pacific Northwest can connect their IT infrastructure directly to Amazon Web Services, establishing a private connection to the cloud that can reduce costs, increase performance and provide a more consistent network experience. The announcement marks the first metro offering for AWS Direct Connect in Portland and the first AWS deployment for EdgeConneX.

The idea of bringing content, the cloud and applications closer to end-users is one that has been predicted by many industry experts. Specifically, in a report titled "The Edge Manifesto: Digital Business, Rich Media, Latency Sensitivity and the Use of Distributed Data Centers" (July 2015), Gartner analyst Bob Gill states, "We've begun the move to digital business, including rich content via mobile devices, where people, their devices and even unattended "things" become actors in transactions." Gill further predicts, "To optimize the experience, Gartner believes the topology of networked data centers will push over the next five years from a centralized, mega data center approach, to one augmented by multiple, smaller, distributed sources and sinks of content and information, whether located in distributed, enterprise-owned data centers, hosting providers, colocation or the cloud."

"The Internet of Everywhere requires a highly diverse and distributed content and cloud architecture, with the network edge extended beyond traditional major peering hubs to ensure the service quality and experience expected by today's enterprises and consumers," remarks Clint Heiden, chief commercial officer, EdgeConneX. "AWS Direct Connect provides the Portland/Hillsboro regional enterprise and consumer end-users an easy, high-performance and private on-ramp to the cloud at the edge, enabling access to Amazon's powerful web services and effective deployment of hybrid solutions supported by EdgeConneX's world-class EDC infrastructure."

The EdgeConneX Portland EDC is purpose-built to offer security, speed and performance improvements. These innovations enable customers to deliver digital content, cloud and applications to end-users as fast as possible. Edge Data Centers are proximity-based, strategically located nearest to the end-user's point of access to reduce network latency and optimize performance. Local proximity access also brings the cloud closer to the enterprise, enabling a more secure, real-time access to cloud applications and services while offering reduced backbone transport costs.