The Data Center Frontier Executive Roundtable features insights from industry executives with lengthy experience in the data center industry. Here’s a look at the insights from Michael Goh of Iron Mountain Data Centers.
MICHAEL GOH,
Iron Mountain
Michael Goh is the Vice President and General Manager for Iron Mountain’s Data Center division for Asia. Prior to Iron Mountain, Michael spent 12 years in NTT Communications and last held a post of an Executive Director for Data Center Services based in Singapore and had successfully launched and grew NTT’s data center business in Singapore. Michael’s initial leadership roles were with NTT where he led a team of product managers and sales specialists and helped launch and manage NTT’s Data Center, Cloud and domestic connectivity products. Michael graduated with a Bachelor of Computer Engineering from the Nanyang Technology University in Singapore.
Here’s the full text of Michael Goh’s insights from our Executive Roundtable:
Data Center Frontier: How is edge computing evolving, and what use cases and applications are gaining the most traction with customers?
Michael Goh: Edge is the fastest-growing segment in the cloud category with the total market expected to expand 37% annually through 2027, according to Grand View Research. Telecom networks, IoT for energy production, video streaming, cloud gaming and retail and public transport apps are all driving demand, along with multi-point next-gen Industry 4.0 apps.
A study by Tomas Rahkonen and Rhonda Ascierto of the Uptime Institute found that the portion of owners/operators using more than 20 Edge data centers today is likely to double in the next two to three years (from 9% now to 20%).
Edge will continue to grow and will be a key segment soon. However, foundational pieces are still being laid out and the trend is moving towards decentralization from key markets to smaller markets. We see players like AWS rolling out Local Zones and Azure moving forward with their Edge deployments. The key dependencies on edge will be connectivity and more coverage.
Data Center Frontier: Last year’s major service outages at Facebook and Amazon Web Services sharpened the focus on data center reliability. As companies embrace the benefits of cloud and hybrid IT architectures, what are the key strategies for ensuring uptime?
Michael Goh: From a colocation service provider perspective, the fundamental requirement is data center uptime. While the data center industry is facing widespread growth, it’s also adapting to a more complex playing field with evolving efficiency and sustainability requirements next to the challenging supply chain.
Hiring and maintaining qualified staff, monitoring and increasing the level of automation in the data center for less chance of human error are key strategies for ensuring uptime. Having comprehensive operations procedures and disaster recovery plans in place is also key.
From an end user perspective, it’s important not to put all your eggs in one basket. We see customers adopting hybrid cloud strategy where they mix workloads in colocation and the cloud providers as well as embracing multi-cloud platforms. This inevitably drives up complexity of the customer’s infrastructures and has indirectly contributed to the rising demand for managed cloud services segment.
The Iron Mountain Data Centers facility in Singapore. (Image: Iron Mountain)
Data Center Frontier: How would you assess the state of the data center supply chain? Are the global supply chain challenges impacting the delivery of data center capacity?
Michael Goh: Supply chain challenges are visible in the data center industry. This is the case in other industries as well because of the shortages that occurred during COVID. We are coping well, but we see new capacity coming online at a slower pace.
In a fast growing and high-demand industry such as the data center industry, new capacity lead times are taking longer than before COVID. We also see this with any sort of equipment that needs a semiconductor to function.
Data Center Frontier: Several data center observers, including The Uptime Institute, have highlighted nuclear power as an option for data center operators to create a low-carbon energy future. Is turning to nuclear power – either through power purchase agreements or modular reactors – a viable option for the data center industry? Should it be?
Michael Goh: We recognize nuclear as being carbon free generation when we calculate our 24/7 carbon free energy consumption. This is consistent with how Google recognizes nuclear generation on the grid.
That said, we are not likely to pursue contracts with new nuclear generation projects like we would with wind or solar. In fact, many nuclear projects are being decommissioned and there are legitimate concerns over the future safety and environmental impact of spent fuel.
Nuclear technology may change over time and address the concerns that exist today. Until then, the lowest cost sources of carbon free energy remain wind, solar and geothermal.