Vapor IO, an Austin-based edge computing startup announced that Cloudflare would be leveraging its micro datacenter footprint to deliver Cloudflare Workers, the serverless computing platform across multiple locations within North America.
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In other news, Vapor IO has announced that it raised USD 90 million Series C funding which will help the company in rapidly expanding the deployment of its infrastructure edge in as many as 36 cities by 2021.
Vapor IO was founded in 2015 with a vision to deliver a low-latency, purpose-built, edge computing infrastructure to support modern applications based on AR, VR, autonomous vehicles and more.
Cloudflare is one of the popular content delivery networks (CDN) with points of presence (PoP) in 200 cities in more than 90 countries. Apart from CDN, Cloudflare also offers DNS, load balancers, application delivery controllers, and firewalls.
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The most interesting offering from Cloudflare is a serverless computing platform delivered through Cloudflare Workers and Cloudflare Workers KV. Developers can write a function in Node.js and deploy it across all the locations of Cloudflare edge locations. This delivery style is referred to as Functions as a Service (FaaS) where code snippets become the unit of deployment. The function is invoked each time an HTTP request is sent to an endpoint. Cloudflare hosts the runtime and endpoints for running the code deployed as functions. Cloudflare Workers KV delivers basic persistence for functions through a distributed key/value database. Developers can use this layer to persistent state and data between the invocations of Workers.
Cloudflare Workers are alternative to FaaS offerings like AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, Google Cloud Functions, IBM Cloud Functions and PubNub Functions. Cloudflare customers tap into the power of Workers to enhance the user experience of applications delivered via the CDN PoP.
Similar to Cloudflare Workers, AWS offers Lambda@Edge runtime available at each CloudFront location. Developers can choose to extend the deployment of functions written in Node.js to the edge through the Lambda@Edge platform. PubNub, the real-time streaming network platform also offers the ability to deploy and run functions across its globally distributed network.
A Vapor Edge Module being lowered by crane onto the concrete slab
VAPOR IO
Vapor IO has a modular, self-contained micro datacenter branded as Kinetic Edge that is typically deployed in locations such as cell towers. The Kinetic Edge platform which offers flexible, highly-distributed infrastructure for delivering modern applications is deployed in Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, and Pittsburgh. By 2021, Vapor IO wants to expand it to 36 locations that cover metros like Austin, Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, Pittsburgh, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington D.C.
With Cloudflare becoming a customer of Vapor IO, Cloudflare Workers serverless computing platform will become available in every micro datacenter powered by Kinetic Edge. This delivers ultra-low latency access to modern applications that utilize FaaS. Developers can take advantage of this by targeting the Kinetic Edge network in addition to the existing global network of Cloudflare.
With 5G around the corner, telecom providers are considering to deploy micro datacenters to deliver low-latency network and infrastructure services to their customers. Vapor IO’s Kinetic Edge has the potential to become the foundation for building the next generation micro datacenters.
One of the indicators of this trend is the recent announcement of AWS Wavelength from Amazon which enables developers to build applications that deliver single-digit millisecond latencies to mobile devices and end-users. Amazon is partnering with Verizon, Vodafone, KDDI and SK Telecom to deliver AWS Wavelength Zones to customers.
Microsoft has also announced that it is partnering with AT&T to extend its edge computing platform based on Azure Stack to the telecom edge.
Kinetic Edge from Vapor IO is a cloud-agnostic infrastructure edge to data center, co-location, and telecom providers.
The availability of Cloudflare serverless computing platform on Kinetic Edge infrastructure bring exciting opportunities to developers and businesses. Going forward, the same infrastructure may support running containers and microservices making it possible to run fully-fledged applications at the edge.
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