IBM has announced a new collaboration with American Tower, a global digital infrastructure provider, to accelerate the deployment of a hybrid, multi-cloud platform at the edge.
As an independent owner, operator and developer of communications real estate solutions, American Tower has a broad portfolio of assets which include almost 225,000 wireless and broadcast towers, rooftops and in-building systems in 25 countries around the globe. This also includes an interconnected footprint of US data center facilities, having acquired CoreSite in 2021.
As part of the collaboration, American Tower plans to expand its neutral-host, Access Edge Data Center ecosystem to include IBM Hybrid Cloud capabilities and Red Hat OpenShift. Both companies will work together to help clients meet the ever-evolving needs of their customers and use technologies such as IoT, 5G, AI and network automation.
With AI and 5G on the rise and creating new business opportunities, both companies will provide the necessary infrastructure for enterprises to help them tap into the full potential of edge computing.
In a blog post, Hillery Hunter, CTO and GM of innovation at IBM Infrastructure and Ed Knapp, CTO and senior VP at American Tower, said: “With interest in distributed edge computing on the rise, IBM and American Tower saw an opportunity to leverage their complementary assets and deliver customer value at scale. IBM plans to provide American Tower with a hybrid cloud platform and automated systems to create an edge cloud at American Tower distributed real estate locations.
“As a result of this collaboration, we aim to give enterprises more flexibility to deploy applications – on public clouds, at the edge, or on premises. This can help to securely process and quickly analyze data closer to the point where it is created.
“Across industries, companies are embracing technologies, such as AI and 5G access networks at the edge to heighten innovation and create new business opportunities. American Tower and IBM will be providing the necessary infrastructure for these enterprises to help them tap into the full potential of edge computing.”
