Vapor IO today launched its Kinetic Edge Exchange (KEX) software-defined interconnection technology and said Digital Realty will be the first to deploy the platform. Digital Realty will roll out KEX in its Chicago and Atlanta data centers first, and it will eventually deploy the interconnection technology in all of its U.S. colocation facilities.

The KEX uses Vapor IO’s Kinetic Edge SDN fabric to connect and coordinate traffic exchange between the Digital Realty campus and Vapor IO’s Kinetic Edge deployments. It allows network operators, application developers, content providers, and other Kinetic Edge users to cross-connect in edge meet-me rooms. This makes it easier and less expensive to peer and exchange data closer to the last-mile wireless and wireline networks.

Endpoint workloads are computed at the Kinetic Edge sites, then passed to the Digital Realty data center to connect to upstream workflow processing, data analysis, and retention. And all of the virtual cross connects can be controlled via software, which allows users to adapt to changing business requirements with automation.

“It’s about having predictable, low latency,” in some cases as low as sub-30-millisecond latency, said Matt Trifiro, chief marketing officer at Vapor IO. Edge computing eliminates network hops that would otherwise happen if traffic had to travel from one data center in Chicago to another in Seattle, for example.

While Digital Realty is Vapor IO’s first major internet exchange partner, it plans to add more, Trifiro said. KEX sounds similar to Equinix’s SDN-enabled interconnection platform. But Trifiro insists the two are complementary — not competitive.

“That’s not the case at all,” he said. “We see ourselves as complementary. I think it would be very difficult for Equinix to compete with us with these smaller data centers, and we don’t intend to go into their business, we don’t run big data centers. We signed on the dotted line with Digital Realty, but I would hope that when we talk in [future] months,” Vapor IO would also partner with Equinix, Trifiro added. “Equinix is a very large player and we’d like to have a relationship with them because we have customers in common.”

The technology builds on Vapor IO’s Kinetic Edge initiative, which combines multiple, tiny data centers to create virtual ones. The architecture includes the vendor’s micro-modular data center, which it has deployed at the base of cell towers and other edge sites — near Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, for example.

“Then we add networking to that,” said Trifiro. “We provide a software-defined Kinetic Edge Fabric that allows our clients to essentially create a flat network. It makes all the geographically distributed data centers in the metro area appear as if they are all in one building.”

Earlier this year Vapor IO announced what Trifiro calls the “ecosystem part of the Kinetic Edge.” This is the Kinetic Edge Alliance, which Vapor IO launched in partnership with other hardware, software, networking, and integration companies. The group plans to bring edge computing to 30 metro markets in the U.S. and go live in six of these markets this year.

“Today we are announcing the fourth part of the Kinetic Edge — the Kinetic Edge Exchange — which completes the initial rollout,” Trifirio said.

In other edge news, EdgeMicro today said it deployed its micro data centers in Austin, Texas; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Tampa, Florida. Its customers include “large internet companies and content providers that are seeking to improve user experience in under-served markets,” according to the edge computing vendor.

Austin and Tampa will be in production this month, and EdgeMicro says Raleigh will follow “close behind.” Additionally, the company is selecting new sites and is in the permitting phase for 20 other cities in 2020.

“This is about much more than three sites going live,” said Jason Bourg, VP of sales at EdgeMicro in a statement. “This is about how the EdgeMicro team has partnered with industry leaders to make these [micro data centers] a critical part of their IT strategies. We are starting with these initial sites and plan to quickly scale to hundreds of locations.”