TORONTO — Microsoft is partnering with global carriers, including Rogers, to enable new 5G customer scenarios with its new Azure Edge Zones and Azure Private Edge Zones. Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform.
Building on its previous work with AT&T, Microsoft announced last week the preview of Azure Edge Zones with carriers, connecting Azure services directly to 5G networks in the carrier’s data centre, explains the news release. With Azure Edge Zones, developers will be able to build optimized and scalable applications for commercial clients using Azure and directly connected to 5G networks, taking advantage of consistent Azure APIs and tooling available in the public cloud, the release says.
This will all help deliver consistent Azure services, app platform and management to the edge with 5G unlocking new scenarios like local data processing for latency-critical industrial IoT and media services workloads and the acceleration of IoT, artificial intelligence, and real-time analytics by optimizing, building, and innovating for robotics, automation, and mixed reality.
Microsoft says it’s expanding its collaboration with several of its carrier partners to bring the Azure Edge Zones family to their mutual customers later this year. In addition to partnering with carriers, Microsoft will also deliver standalone Azure Edge Zones in select cities over the next 12 months, bringing Azure closer to customers and developers in highly dense areas, the news release says.
At the same time, Microsoft announced the preview of Azure Private Edge Zones — a private 5G/LTE network combined with Azure Stack Edge on-premises delivering an ultra-low latency, secure and high-bandwidth solution for organizations. For example, Microsoft and Rogers are working with Calgary’s Attabotics to accelerate e-commerce delivery times by using 3D robotic goods-to-person storage, retrieval, and real-time order fulfilment.
“In collaboration with Microsoft, Rogers is delivering new and innovative solutions with our private LTE capabilities combined with Azure Edge Zones,” said Dean Prevost, president of Rogers for Business, in the news release. “Working with Attabotics, we’re enabling Canadian businesses to transform the traditional supply model with a retail e-fulfilment solution that showcases the exciting possibilities of today and opens the door to our 5G future.”
For more information about Microsoft’s Azure Edge Zones, please click here.
