IBM is collaborating with Massachusetts-based digital infrastructure provider American Tower to accelerate the deployment of a hybrid, multi-cloud computing platform at the edge.

Through this collaboration, American Tower plans to expand its neutral-host, access edge data centre ecosystem to include IBM hybrid cloud capabilities and Red Hat OpenShift. The two companies will work together to help clients address their evolving requirements and expectations around digital transformation by enabling technologies such as IoT, 5G, AI and network automation.

American Tower is an independent owner, operator and developer of communications real estate options. The company has a portfolio of assets including nearly 225,000 wireless and broadcast towers, rooftops, and in-building systems across 25 countries globally, and a highly interconnected footprint of US data centre facilities, after acquiring CoreSite in 2021.

With interest in distributed edge computing on the rise, IBM and American Tower saw an opportunity to leverage their complementary assets and deliver 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.

The aim is to give enterprises more flexibility to deploy applications on public clouds, at the edge or on premises. This can help securely process and quickly analyse data closer to the point where they are created.

Across industries, companies are embracing technologies, such as AI and 5G access networks, at the edge to heighten innovation and create business opportunities. American Tower and IBM will be providing the infrastructure for these enterprises to help them tap into the potential of edge computing.

The automotive industry is a prime example. Jim Morrish, managing director of Transforma Insights, said: “At the end of 2022 there were 14.1 billion active IoT devices and by 2032 connected car (vehicle platform or head unit) devices will exceed 1.8 billion, growing at a CAGR of 11.8 per cent.”

Vehicles contain dozens of computers and microcontrollers, all requiring updates at the point of final assembly and throughout the vehicles’ lifecycle. Installing firmware manually can have a high cost for manufacturers, which may cause them to seek quicker and more cost-effective methods. By using edge capabilities from American Tower and IBM, automotive OEMs should be able to transmit software updates rapidly to vehicles before they are shipped to dealers. This could help manufacturers optimise efficiency, while addressing their latency, data sovereignty, security, compliance readiness and reliability requirements.

For more information about IBM edge computing, visit www.ibm.com/edge-computing. For more information about American Tower, visit www.americantower.com/us/data-centers-edge.