Lumen Technologies is one of the top ten companies in the edge computing sector with over 30 patent assets in the last five years. They have been utilizing this position to strike partnerships with other large companies recently, with one partnership with T-Mobile being the highlight of a previous insight. In July of 2021, Lumen has now struck a deal with Microsoft to be a preferred partner in offering edge computing with Azure services.
Although this partnership currently revolves around Microsoft’s Azure platform utilizing edge computing, Lumen’s significant portfolio in the communication category could be valuable as an alternative to Microsoft acquiring another company for their gaming ambitions if the two sides can agree on terms to make the partnership more permanent. As discussed in a recent insight, Microsoft’s current strategy in gaming puts them in need of expanding their presence in the communications category where currently Lumen leads in patent assets behind only Cisco.
For Lumen, the victories just keep adding up as Microsoft’s partnership joins a group of Google, Amazon, and T-Mobile that have already partnered with Lumen. While Lumen was slightly later to join the market in releasing a public roadmap, their early entrance into patenting within the sector has given them a valuable portfolio to leverage for partnerships.
The fact that Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have all entered a non-exclusive partnership with Lumen instead of building their own solutions speaks to how prime of a position Lumen is in within the communications category. These three companies account for 58% of the cloud computing market as of Q3 in 2020. This reliance on a non-exclusive partnership, especially for Amazon who created AWS initially for their own use, is notable and shows how beneficial Lumen's strong patent strategy has been. To keep an eye on other companies that may need to partner and see how Lumen created a strategic patent portfolio that is paying off, check out the Edge Computing Patent Forecast®!
