Lumen's edge computing services are crossing the pond, bringing its edge infrastructure and services to customers in Europe.

With the update, enterprise and public sector customers in Europe can now deploy applications and workloads at the cloud edge.

Lumen was able to expand its edge services into Europe by turning on 100G MPLS and IP network connectivity, plus increasing power and cooling at several edge data center locations.

The service provider's EMEA network, which includes about 42,000 route miles (67,000 km) of fiber, connects to over 2,500 on-net buildings and 540 public and private third-party data centers.

North America accounts for 41.2% of edge services revenue in 2022, followed by Europe (27.5%) and Asia & Oceania (25.2%), according to Omdia.

With the edge services update, Lumen's European customers will have access to Lumen Edge Bare Metal, Lumen Network Storage, Lumen Edge Private Cloud and the Lumen Edge Gateway. These services include pay-as-you-go server hardware, network storage for ingesting and updating data, private cloud access via Lumen's global fiber network and a Multi-access Edge Compute (MEC) platform for premises, respectively.

"Customers in Europe can now tap into the power of the Lumen platform, underpinned by Lumen's extensive fiber footprint, to deploy data-heavy applications and workloads that demand ultra-low latency at the cloud edge," Annette Murphy, regional president for EMEA and APAC at Lumen, said in a statement.

Lumen's edge computing services meet about 97% of US enterprise demand and about 70% of enterprise demand in the UK, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands within 5 milliseconds of latency – and plans are underway to add more locations in Europe later this year – according to the service provider.

In all, Lumen manages and operates about 500,000 global route miles (805,000 km) of fiber. The service provider also has over 190,000 on-net buildings connected to 2,200 public and private third-party data centers and public cloud providers.

Low-latency edge services gain traction with enterprises

Edge computing services are growing in popularity among enterprises seeking "lower latency, greater network efficiency, and better control over data for compliance reasons," according to analysts at Omdia.

"Edge consulting services form the largest part of this market (39.3% in 2022), providing substantial opportunities for system integrators (SIs), telcos, ICT solutions vendors and consultancies," the Omdia analysts added. In addition to consulting services, fully managed edge services are gaining in popularity. Omdia describes fully managed edge services as including MEC, workload and database management that's easily accessed via the cloud.

Figure 1: Click here for a larger version of this image.
(Source: Omdia)

The global market for enterprise edge services is forecast to reach $97.0 billion this year, and more than double to $214.1 billion by 2026, according to Omdia. In addition, the market is predicted to grow by a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 20.4% from 2022 to 2026.

Analysts at Dell'Oro Group predict that edge computing will comprise 8% of total data center infrastructure spending by 2026.

— Kelsey Kusterer Ziser, Senior Editor, Light Reading