Microsoft Corp. today pulled back the curtains on Azure Edge Zones, a new edge computing platform aimed at latency-sensitive use cases such as robotics, mixed reality and real-time analytics.

The company is taking on Amazon Web Services Inc., which introduced a competing solution called Wavelength late last year.

An Azure Edge Zone is essentially a scaled-down Azure data center that sits closer to the customer than Microsoft’s main cloud facilities. Because it’s closer, data takes less time to cross the network, which can significantly improve performance for latency-sensitive applications.

Azure Edge Zones will come in multiple flavors. The standard version consists of Edge Zones that Microsoft plans to deploy throughout major population centers and rent out to customers similarly to how it sells cloud resources on Azure. Organizations will have the ability to run applications on Edge Zones, including both containerized workloads and virtual machines, with access to a “select set of Azure services.”

“For example, enterprises running a headquarters’ infrastructure on Azure, may leverage Azure Edge Zones for latency sensitive interactive customer experiences,” Yousef Khalidi, corporate vice president of the Azure Networking group, detailed in a blog post.

The second edition of Edge Zones in is called Private Edge Zones. It follows the same basic concept as the standard version, except that enterprises can set up the solution on-premises in their own facilities. There’s built-in 5G and LTE support that makes it possible to create a dedicated wireless network for the location where a Private Edge Zone is deployed. 

Logistics startup Attabotics Inc., an early adopter, uses the platform to manage warehouse robots. A utility, meanwhile, could employ a Private Edge Zone to analyze data from field sensors in real time, while healthcare providers can adopt the solution to improve security. “Private mobile connections will work as smart grids for hospitals, patient data, and diagnostics that will never have to be exposed to the internet to take advantage of Azure technologies,” Khalidi wrote.

Microsoft also sees a major opportunity in the mobile market. The company is partnering with AT&T Inc. and a number of other carriers to co-locate some Edge Zones in their data centers, “one hop” away from the 5G networks they’re currently building. Microsoft said that will allow the colocated Edge Zones to handle requests from mobile devices with latency of below 10 milliseconds, improving the performance of services such as mixed reality apps and game streaming platforms.

Edge Zones is currently in preview.

Photo: Microsoft