Dell Technologies Inc. has set its sights on becoming a major provider of exascale multicloud edge infrastructure services for its enterprise clients, and it will be working with Fedex Corp. and the data center colocation services provider Switch Inc. to achieve that goal.

Edge infrastructure is becoming important because it makes it possible for data produced by mobile and “internet of things” devices to be processed closer to its source, instead of being sent across long routes to centralized data centers or clouds. The advantage of processing data closer to the network edge is that it can be analyzed faster, which means organizations can make decisions based on that analysis in real-time using technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Dell said today it’s partnering with FedEx and Switch in order to provide the necessary compute, storage and connectivity resources for clients that want their data to be processed at the network edge, in order to boost the performance of latency-sensitive applications.

Dell said it wants to build an unnamed number of technology hubs across the United States that are capable of supporting exascale multicloud and hybrid environments for edge processing. The hubs will be built using a combination of Dell’s cloud infrastructure and Switch’s edge data center technology, and placed strategically in secure FedEx locations around the U.S. in order to provide nationwide coverage. The first one will be in FedEx’s hometown of Memphis early next year, with other locations to come based on customer demand.

Switch will provide its Switch MOD 15 Class 4 EDGE data center technology to ensure 100% uptime at each edge location, while Dell will provide the bulk of the hardware necessary, including servers, storage, networking and hyperconverged infrastructure, as well as management and support services. As for FedEx, it will provide the actual real estate to host the technology hubs along with part of the investment capital that’s needed to fund the endeavor.

FedEx will also be the first consumer of these exascale multicloud edge infrastructure services, and that experience will enable it to provide what it calls “enterprise end-user technical expertise” to clients. The deployments will provide low-latency access to high-density compute from FedEx locations, the company said.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller told SiliconANGLE that FedEx’s involvement is necessary because geographical proximity in edge computing is just as important as the small-scale data center expertise that Switch provides and the hardware that Dell excels in. Even so, while FedEx provides a good starting point with its wide geographic coverage, Mueller noted that its infrastructure usually tends to be located where ground costs are low and where logistics are good, which means it’s still some distance away from population centers.

“The prize in the battle for edge data center locations is getting as close as possible to where the data is made, and that usually means getting closer to people,” Mueller said. “So retailers, banks and convenience chains are going to be the real prize in the near future as partners for edge data centers.”

Dell has actually been working to enable edge computing for some time. Last year the company announced it was partnering with AT&T Inc. on a separate initiative that aims to build the open-source 5G networks that edge computing centers will be reliant on.

Dell Technologies Global Chief Technology Officer John Roese said his company sees a big opportunity in edge infrastructure, since organizations are becoming increasingly reliant on near real-time connectivity to data generated at its source.

“In working with FedEx and Switch, we can create a more local cloud-based environment, offering customers faster access to their workloads and data for greater flexibility and speed,” Roese said.

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