• About Us
  • Partnership Opportunities
  • Privacy Policy

Data Center Frontier

Charting the future of data centers and cloud computing.

  • Cloud
    • Hyperscale
  • Colo
    • Site Selection
    • Interconnection
  • Energy
    • Sustainability
  • Cooling
  • Technology
    • Internet of Things
    • AI & Machine Learning
    • Edge Computing
    • Virtual Reality
    • Autonomous Cars
    • 5G Wireless
    • Satellites
  • Design
    • Servers
    • Storage
    • Network
  • Voices
  • Podcast
  • White Papers
  • Resources
    • COVID-19
    • Events
    • Newsletter
    • Companies
    • Data Center 101
  • Jobs
You are here: Home / Special Reports / How High-Speed Fiber Networks Can Future-Proof Data Centers

How High-Speed Fiber Networks Can Future-Proof Data Centers

By Paul Gillin - February 18, 2022

How High-Speed Fiber Networks Can Future-Proof Data Centers

Boston has a highly developed fiber footprint, with a variety of long-haul and metro options. (Image: Shutterstock)

LinkedinTwitterFacebookSubscribe
Mail

Data centers are evolving from centralized facilities into a decentralized network of resources tied together by a robust cloud infrastructure. This launches our special report series on how high-speed fiber networks can future-proof distributed data centers.

fiber networks

Get the full report

The rapid growth of cloud services has created a popular impression that data centers are dinosaurs. In reality, the market is robust and growing. Gartner expects global data center spending to increase 5.3% in 2022 and to continue steady growth through at least 2024.

But future data centers will look quite different from their predecessors. Historically, data centers were large, centralized facilities intended to serve an entire company or a large geographic region. With the arrival of cloud infrastructure, that model is being replaced by a fabric of resources distributed across the globe to handle constantly shifting workloads according to the organization’s need for availability, responsiveness, scalability, and security.

Growth in the use of intelligent devices — also called the internet of things — will drive that market to more than double to $1.06 trillion in 2030, according to Statista. This, in turn, is spurring the evolution of a new approach to infrastructure that moves computing closer to the points at which data is collected and disseminated, a topology called “edge computing.”

infrastucture

Source: Gartner

infrastructure

Source: Statista

This trend will grow as computing power becomes more distributed to meet the demands for faster response times, analytic workloads, and real-time processing for such purposes as remote equipment monitoring, predictive maintenance, real-time logistics, rapid health diagnostics, and securities trading.

Data growth creates complexity

The drive to digitally transform businesses to data- driven decision-making has organizations focusing intensely on how they can better capture and leverage data, even as volumes are growing at a 23% compound annual rate, according to International Data Corp. The more data that is generated, the more resources are needed to manage it.

Cloud platforms have given organizations a bounty of new choices about where and how to store and process that information. However, few are willing to put all their data processing eggs in a single cloud basket. On average, enterprises use 2.6 public and 2.7 private clouds, according to Flexera.

The result is that data processing facilities and resources are growing across the board.

In addition to the data center growth cited earlier, worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is forecast to grow 20% in 2022 to $397.5 billion, according to Gartner. Colocation services are flourishing as well as organizations disperse processing power closer to the places where it is most needed and seek to take advantage of high-speed interconnect services. Grand View Research expects the data center colocation market will grow more than 13% annually to nearly $118 billion by 2028.

Even companies that make extensive use of public cloud services typically maintain some on-premises infrastructure to meet regulatory needs, provide backup and store highly sensitive data. Organizations are also increasingly shifting data and processing loads between owned infrastructure and multiple cloud providers as they seek the most robust services at the lowest prices.

The types of data organizations are capturing and using are also changing. Streaming data from sensors, video cameras, online transactions, and social media streams will make up more than 30% of all data generated in 2025, according to IDC. The new technologies that carry and consume these streams such as smart sensors, autonomous vehicles, high- speed 5G wireless networks, and robotics will place more intense demands on IT infrastructure. Latency will be a key factor in the successful deployment of many groundbreaking new applications.

Taken together, these factors will drive a shift away from centralized processing to multitier architectures, with data being managed both at the point of generation as well as further upstream in regional data centers and cloud servers. Edge computing will be a major factor in this transition. Gartner predicts that three-quarters of enterprise- generated data will be created and processed at the edge by 2025, up from just 10% in 2018. Small data centers and even individual servers in the field will gather this data, making decisions that require immediate action and uploading aggregated data to regional nexus points and the cloud.

Many edge and IoT devices will have special requirements to maintain uninterrupted operation in changeable and often adverse environmental conditions, including protections against the elements, power surges, and physical damage. Almost two-thirds of IoT adopters have reported that device failure rates in the field are much higher than in an office or data center, according to IoTForAll. The intelligence needed to maintain these distributed architectures must move into the network itself so that automated tools can leverage analytics and high-speed connectivity to detect and remediate problems in the field before they occur.

An increasing number of business-to- business transactions are moving online.

E-commerce is also rapidly becoming a business staple. Online transactions were already growing rapidly before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 2 billion people purchasing goods or services online in 2020. The crisis accelerated that growth and e-commerce is now expected to make up nearly 22% of all retail sales by 2024, up from just 13.6% in 2019. An increasing number of business- to-business transactions are moving online as well reaching nearly $10 trillion last year.

Online customers are demanding. They expect immediate gratification and quickly navigate elsewhere if response times are slow. A difference of just four seconds in page load times increases bounce rates by 90%, according to Think with Google. The need to provide rapid response and frictionless transactions is pressuring companies to invest heavily in bandwidth, interconnection, advanced wireless services, and edge processing.

Download the full report, Future-Proofing the Distributed Data Center with High-Speed Fiber Networks, courtesy of Belden, to learn more. In our next article, we’ll look at how market dynamics are driving IT leaders to evolve their data processing strategies.

LinkedinTwitterFacebookSubscribe
Mail

Tagged With: Belden, Data Center Design, Data Center Frontier Special Report, Fiber

Newsletters

Stay informed: Get our weekly updates!

Are you a new reader? Follow Data Center Frontier on Twitter or Facebook.

About Paul Gillin

Paul Gillin is a speaker, writer and technology journalist who has written five books and more than 400 articles on the topic of social media and digital marketing. A technology journalist for 25 years, he has served as Enterprise Editor of the tech news site SiliconAngle since 2014. He was founding editor-in-chief of B2B technology publisher TechTarget, and served as editor-in-chief and executive editor of the technology weekly Computerworld.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Voices of the Industry

Mitigate Risk, Improve Performance and Decrease Operating Expenses through Data Center Self-Performance

Mitigate Risk, Improve Performance and Decrease Operating Expenses through Data Center Self-Performance If a vendor conducts the actual work in your data center, then you or your operator aren’t maximizing your current operating resources and are experiencing incremental cost and risk. Chad Giddings of BCS Data Center Operations, explains the importance of your data center provider having a high-degree of self-performance.

White Papers

Cloud computing

Intel MCA+MFP Helps JD Stable and Efficient Cloud Services

A new white paper from Intel explores how Intel MCA Recovery  + MFP has helped JD Cloud provide efficient and stable services to their more than 2,500 partners.

Get this PDF emailed to you.

We always respect your privacy and we never sell or rent our list to third parties. By downloading this White Paper you are agreeing to our terms of service. You can opt out at any time.

DCF Spotlight

Data center modules on display at the recent Edge Congress conference in Austin, Texas. (Photo: Rich Miller)

Edge Computing is Poised to Remake the Data Center Landscape

Data center leaders are investing in edge computing and edge solutions and actively looking at new ways to deploy edge capacity to support evolving business and user requirements.

An aerial view of major facilities in Data Center Alley in Ashburn, Virginia. (Image: Loudoun County)

Northern Virginia Data Center Market: The Focal Point for Cloud Growth

The Northern Virginia data center market is seeing a surge in supply and an even bigger surge in demand. Data Center Frontier explores trends, stats and future expectations for the No. 1 data center market in the country.

See More Spotlight Features

Newsletters

Get the Latest News from Data Center Frontier

Job Listings

RSS Job Openings | Pkaza Critical Facilities Recruiting

  • Electrical Commissioning Engineer - Los Angeles, CA
  • Data Center Construction Project Manager - Ashburn, VA
  • Critical Power Energy Manager - Data Center Development - Dallas, TX
  • Data Center Facilities Operations VP - Seattle, WA
  • Senior Electrical Engineer - Data Center - Dallas, TX

See More Jobs

Data Center 101

Data Center 101: Mastering the Basics of the Data Center Industry

Data Center 101: Mastering the Basics of the Data Center Industry

Data Center Frontier, in partnership with Open Spectrum, brings our readers a series that provides an introductory guidebook to the ins and outs of the data center and colocation industry. Think power systems, cooling, solutions, data center contracts and more. The Data Center 101 Special Report series is directed to those new to the industry, or those of our readers who need to brush up on the basics.

  • Data Center Power
  • Data Center Cooling
  • Strategies for Data Center Location
  • Data Center Pricing Negotiating
  • Cloud Computing

See More Data center 101 Topics

About Us

Charting the future of data centers and cloud computing. We write about what’s next for the Internet, and the innovations that will take us there. We tell the story of the digital economy through the data center facilities that power cloud computing and the people who build them. Read more ...
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

About Our Founder

Data Center Frontier is edited by Rich Miller, the data center industry’s most experienced journalist. For more than 20 years, Rich has profiled the key role played by data centers in the Internet revolution. Meet the DCF team.

TOPICS

  • 5G Wireless
  • Cloud
  • Colo
  • Connected Cars
  • Cooling
  • Cornerstone
  • Coronavirus
  • Design
  • Edge Computing
  • Energy
  • Executive Roundtable
  • Featured
  • Finance
  • Hyperscale
  • Interconnection
  • Internet of Things
  • Machine Learning
  • Network
  • Podcast
  • Servers
  • Site Selection
  • Social Business
  • Special Reports
  • Storage
  • Sustainability
  • Videos
  • Virtual Reality
  • Voices of the Industry
  • Webinar
  • White Paper

Copyright Endeavor Business Media© 2022