Facing the Challenges of Today’s Modern Data Center: Standing at the Edge

Jan. 6, 2023
AFL’s Manja Thessin, Enterprise Market Manager, and Seán Adam, Vice President of Market Strategy and Innovation, explore how edge data centers are key to unleashing advanced use cases resulting in new user experiences and new business opportunities.

The global pandemic has advanced digital transformation by several years as it’s changed the way we approach almost all aspects of life.

Digital transformation refers to the process of digitizing a network’s infrastructure through technology, and COVID-19 has shown us that we can conduct most all parts of our lives digitally. Applications including work-from-home, school-from-home and telehealth have become the “new normal.” But even more advanced applications such as autonomous vehicles, remote surgeries and smart agriculture are also becoming a reality.

As technologies evolve, so do their capabilities as they continue to become part of our everyday life. In today’s hyperconnected world, companies need a way to scale and analyze data faster, cheaper and better. The only way to do that is to move out of the cloud and on to the edge of the network where most of the future data will be generated.

Although public and hybrid cloud solutions will continue to dominate the data center space in the near future, another dynamic has come into play – the Emerging Edge. The edge is not just one thing – it’s a continuum or an ecosystem made up of six distinct layers that spans anywhere between the user end-device at the edge of the network and the cloud:

  • Cloud Data Center
  • MetroEdge and Colocation
  • Central Office
  • Facility, Factory, Campus and Venue
  • Macro Site, Small Cell, CRAN, FWA and Private LTE
  • OSP Cabinets/Fixtures

It’s said that the edge is ushering in the third act of the internet. Since its formation, the internet has experienced three separate acts – the first act beginning around the 1980s to 1990s with the introduction of the internet. During this era, large, centralized data centers were the main infrastructure, the web browser made its first appearance and users were primarily concerned with getting data from point A to point B. As the internet grew, the second act took place between the 2000s to the 2020 timeframe. This act consisted of the Regional Internet, including regional data centers, content delivery networks and one of the key drivers being 3G and 4G cellular devices. Now, we are in the third act, which can be thought of as the local internet or the internet at the edge. Cellular data networks, such as 4G and the capabilities of 5G, play a critical role in enabling real-time applications that will require compute and storage capabilities closer and closer to the edge.

As wireless technology evolves and data rates continue to rise, the need for compute power as close as possible to the application becomes even greater. An IDC report forecasts that worldwide spending on edge computing solutions is expected to reach nearly $274 billion by 2025. Additionally, the global capital expenditure on IT equipment for the edge infrastructure is projected to grow to $104 billion by 2028 according to a recent State of the Edge report. One of the primary drivers of this emerging edge is usable data creation, which is the amount of data that’s created by the devices we wear and that are in our homes or cars.

Computing at the edge “extends” the cloud network by bringing it closer to the end user device, or application, and delivers services such as compute storage and processing power. This relieves the load on the cloud data center processing units and reduces traffic between applications and the cloud. As a result, edge computing reduces overall data backhaul, which increases network efficiency by freeing up bandwidth and decreasing costs.

Edge computing also reduces latency, which can be thought of as the currency of the edge. When thinking about tomorrow’s emerging applications, such as self-driving cars and remote surgeries, low latency is crucial to enabling them. The Near-Edge isn’t sufficient for tomorrow’s transformational applications where a split second can make a difference between life and death. For example, autonomous cars will not only need to control and drive themselves, but they will also need to “talk” to the other vehicles on the road as well as the smart city infrastructure to understand where you are.

Edge computing has the potential to unleash a variety of advanced use cases resulting in new user experiences and new business opportunities. Achieving this will require both high data rates and low latency, and edge data centers are key to this emerging reality.

Manja Thessin is Enterprise Market Manager at AFL. Seán Adam is Vice President of Market Strategy and Innovation at AFL, an international manufacturer providing end-to-end solutions to the energy, service provider, enterprise, hyperscale and industrial markets. Contact AFL to learn more about their solutions.

About the Author

Voices of the Industry

Our Voice of the Industry feature showcases guest articles on thought leadership from sponsors of Data Center Frontier. For more information, see our Voices of the Industry description and guidelines.

Sponsored Recommendations

Optimizing AI Infrastructure: The Critical Role of Liquid Cooling

In this executive brief, we discuss the growing need for liquid cooling in data centers due to the increasing power demands of AI and high-performance computing. Discover how ...

AI-Driven Data Centers: Revolutionizing Decarbonization Strategies

AI hype has put data centers in the spotlight, sparking concerns over energy use—but they’re also key to a greener future. With renewable power and cutting-edge cooling, data ...

Bending the Energy Curve: Decoupling Digitalization Trends from Data Center Energy Growth

After a decade of stability, data center energy consumption is now set to surge—but can we change the trajectory? Discover how small efficiency gains could cut energy growth by...

AI Reference Designs to Enable Adoption: A Collaboration Between Schneider Electric and NVIDIA

Traditional data center power, cooling, and racks aren’t sufficient for GPU-based servers arranged in high-density AI clusters...

Legrand
Source: Legrand

Building Data Centers for Tomorrow’s AI Era

Bob Crain, director marketing/product development at Cablofil, explains the crucial role electrical contractor play in ensuring that data centers can meet operational demands ...

White Papers

Dcf Vertiv Wp Cover 2022 08 15 13 47 38

Vertiv’s Approach to Environmental, Social and Governance Matters

Aug. 16, 2022
Vertiv presents their approach to environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) including what they’re doing for the planet, for their people, and for their neighbors....