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From Juilliard To Building Global Edge Platforms
- Zachary Smith moved from Juilliard double bass to running cloud infrastructure after fixing computers and building an early Linux web hosting/cloud platform.
- He founded Packet to automate single-tenant hardware and sold it to Equinix to enable programmatic global infrastructure deployment in minutes instead of months.
Internet Losing Its Flatness Drives Metro Edge Growth
- The internet is becoming less flat as enterprises localize workloads for performance and regulatory needs, driving a metro and multi-region edge strategy.
- Advances like serverless workers across many markets and multi-region databases enable a shift from a few regions to workloads running everywhere.
Metro Edge Beats Closest-Node Thinking
- Equinix focuses on the metro edge where ecosystem density matters more than raw proximity to users; optimal placement is where most network endpoints converge.
- Being equidistant to clouds, telcos, and offices reduces backhaul and improves real-world latency for apps calling dozens of endpoints.