The Rebirth of Edge Economies Through Digital Infrastructure

As business reliance on technology grows, urban centers are benefitting from substantial digital infrastructure investment, helping organizations and communities to flourish. However, with economic growth closely tied to technological capability, ensuring access to core infrastructure more broadly is critical.

In our technologically dominated day, almost every major company is working its way through a digital transformation program of some sort. These projects are often launched when a new CEO or CIO realizes that a change is required, maybe because their technology is holding them back, their customers are demanding a better experience, or maybe because they just want to operate more efficiently. 

Alternatively, a new market entrant could be shaking up their industry to the point that what they have done for years looks irrelevant. Even beyond digital transformation initiatives, it’s a fundamental truth that data is one of the most important and universal currencies of our era. As such, it’s vital that organizations have access to resources that can help them manage, store, transfer, and utilize this data effectively. When demands and evolutions are moving as quickly as they are now, leveraging powerful digital solutions becomes essential for survival. 

According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social AffairsOpens a new window , “an estimated 68% of the world’s population will live in urban areas by 2050. By 2030 alone, the world is projected to have 43 megacities with more than 10 million inhabitants.” Naturally, as individuals and companies migrate toward these socioeconomic centers, IT infrastructure is built due to rapidly increasing demand. Beyond these megacities, however, bridging the gap between digital demand and digital capability becomes less straightforward despite the criticality of technology infrastructure remaining the same. 

Learn More: How To Outmaneuver the Uncertainties of COVID-19

Understanding the Need for Equitable Digital Infrastructure 

If we take a look at the Southeast, for example, we frequently see that businesses that want to capitalize on digital infrastructure are burdened by some less-than-ideal choices. In particular, businesses in underserved cities are made to choose between committing to long drives to colocation data centers in major metropolitan areas, settling for local facilities that don’t offer cutting-edge solutions, or building their own data centers and taking on the cost and complexity themselves.

While the population density may be reduced outside of central hubs, high demand for digital resources doesn’t end at the edge of these urban centers. The search for digital infrastructure solutions occurs at more or less the same rate across the U.S. and around the world. In smaller, growing cities in the Carolinas, for instance, the demand for Tier III regional data centers is on an upswing. 

This is because organizations in the region seek enhanced security, reliability, cost-efficiency, and expertise that lets them focus resources strategically, enhance operations and deliver better results — just like many other organizations across a range of geographies. Furthermore, a growing number of companies are looking for facilities that are close to their customers and locations for the added benefit of enhanced application performance. 

Proximity to a high-performance storage platform, highly available and high-capacity private networks and secure, reliable multi-tenant facilities is an indispensable benefit, presenting important opportunities to empower and protect data. Furthermore, digital infrastructure’s benefits extend beyond the companies it directly serves, offering advantages to the communities and regions it’s located in. 

When we broaden our scope beyond the trajectories of individual companies, it becomes clear that partnerships between organizations and digital infrastructure providers are critical to the future development of cities and their ability to grow economically. 

Learn More: Edge Data Centers: The Solution To Latency

The Symbiotic Relationship Between Data Centers and Local Communities

Now, some data center partners are choosing to invest in communities like Greenville, SC, Birmingham, AL, and Chattanooga, TN. Choosing sites in markets like these ensures that businesses in those cities and the regions surrounding them can keep pace with digital transformation, remaining competitive in the greater business landscape and supporting both themselves and their communities more effectively. 

Delivering state-of-the-art data centers in these regions offers more than just vital colocation, cloud, and connectivity capabilities to the eventual tenants — the subsequent effects of digital infrastructure go far beyond that, mutually benefitting all. Modern data centers bring well-paying jobs and significant capital investment, and attract technology-dependent businesses to communities, accelerating economic growth in both the short term and long term. This draws more organizations to the area and creates an ongoing cycle of investment by building a reputation for these areas as having world-class technology infrastructure. 

In truth, all it takes to begin this sustained process of digital and economic support is one investment, and these key investments require a digital infrastructure partner that understands their role not only on the customer level but on the community level as well. In an era that is so dependent on digital means, there is a kind of responsibility that has been created for those that supply the crucial foundations of truly empowered IT frameworks. 

In this way, facilitating technological support and delivering resources accordingly, even if that means moving beyond the boundaries of the well-established hubs, is vital for our collective growth and important for ensuring local communities remain on the path of prosperity and success. 

Did you enjoy reading this article? Let us know your thoughts on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We would love to hear from you!