Dell Technologies, FedEx, and Switch have teamed up to develop exascale multicloud edge infrastructure services. The three companies said the goal is to bring compute, storage, and connectivity to the network edge and help customers overcome performance barriers for latency-sensitive applications.

This initiative will focus on bringing multicloud resources and exascale compute power closer to where customers run their businesses. Taking this approach allows organizations to make real-time decisions using capabilities like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and 5G, the companies said.

The companies plan to build technology hubs across the United States that will be capable of supporting multiple cloud environments with Switch’s edge data centers and Dell Technologies’ cloud infrastructure. The hubs will be placed in secure FedEx locations, with the first underway in Memphis, TN. The goal is to have the first location operational in early 2021.

This combination creates the foundation for a consistent experience across multiple cloud platforms, the companies said.

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Switch will deliver 100% uptime at the edge by utilizing its Class 4 EDGE data center, the Switch MOD 15, interconnected with Switch’s four PRIME data center campus locations, according to the company.

The data centers’ infrastructure will include Dell Technologies servers, hyperconverged infrastructure, storage, and networking products. As the managed solutions provider, Dell Technologies will deliver the cloud solutions and services to support operations.

FedEx will provide the real estate and a portion of the construction and infrastructure costs. As the first consumer of these services, FedEx said it will provide enterprise end-user technical expertise as the basis for end-state product offerings. 

These deployments will provide low latency access to high density compute from FedEx operational locations, helping to power the digital innovations introduced by the company as FedEx transforms how data and technology are used in the global supply chain, the company said.

This relationship also brings together the three companies’ aligned sustainability visions:

• By 2030, for every Dell Technologies product a customer buys, Dell will reuse or recycle an equivalent product;

• FedEx’s global citizenship initiative to decrease the company’s environmental footprint and achieve its corporate sustainability goals;

• Switch’s commitment to running its data center campus locations and edge deployments with 100% clean energy.

“The increasing pace of business is creating a growing reliance on near real-time connectivity to data that resides on the edge,” said John Roese, global chief technology officer, at Dell Technologies, in a statement. “In working with FedEx and Switch, we can create a more local cloud-based environment, offering customers faster access to their workloads and data for greater flexibility and speed.”

As the size and scale of FedEx’s network continue to increase, more data processing is moving to the edge to support the automation and technology required to move more than 16 million packages each day, according to Rob Carter, executive vice president and CIO of FedEx Corp. and president and co-CEO of FedEx Services.

“The access to multi-cloud edge compute provided by this collaboration with Dell and Switch will allow us to continue reimagining what is possible from our unique position at the intersection of physical and digital worlds,” Carter said in a statement.

“Offering enterprise-class data centers from the Primes to the Prem, paired with Dell Technologies’ products and services suite and FedEx’s world-class physical infrastructure footprint, creates the technology platform that tomorrow’s businesses will need,” said Rob Roy, CEO and founder of Switch, in a statement. “Teaming up with FedEx and Dell allows the three of us to create and demonstrate how enterprise customers can maintain independent control of their technology futures in the age of hybrid multi-cloud.”

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