LOOKING FORWARD
“Many MDC manufacturers are currently installing units
in ‘tier 2’ and ‘tier 3’ US cities, where there aren't a lot
of data centers already.”6 As the number of connected
devices grows, there may be a need to move certain process
functions closer and closer to the device or clusters
of similar devices. That may necessitate placing a small
data center within or attached to a building such as a convenience
store, each concourse of a stadium (some installations
happening now) or perhaps at the base of every
5G tower or repeater location.
“It's one of the few technological developments that
features eggs showing up before chickens. Meaning, data
centers for edge computing are beginning to pop up before
widespread demand for edge computing services.” Sami
Badri, Credit Suisse.7
Globally, “We know that to realise the full potential
of 5G the prerequisites are a lot of investment in network
(upgraded connectivity with more cells, higher density
and plenty of fibre), a lot of investment in compute (lots
of smaller scale data centre capacity close to customers)
and more spectrum. Within the data centre, network
upgrades will be needed with changes to switching and
routers. Interconnection will be key, and we will hear a lot
of talk about Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) and
Software Defined Networking (SDN). This all suggests that
most of the short-term growth opportunities are within
and around the telecoms supply chain and small-scale
data centre construction and repurposing. However,
as 5G densities increase, opportunities for existing data
centres should emerge.”8
Soon the industry may experience the need for these
micro edges to be more mobile than they are today to
accommodate temporary events, such as concerts, festivals,
and sporting events like the PGA tour. As more and
more non-Zigbee supported IoT devices make their way
into homes, the need may come to have neighborhood
edges. Eventually, many years from now, people may not
be able to tolerate neighborhood latency for functions
that can only be dreamt of today and will need micro
edge functions inside the house. While personal handheld
devices have tons of computing power, and the associated
operating systems have streamlined on device processes
to save time, there is a goal to eventually remove
36 I ICT TODAY
the processing function from the actual device and allow
it to be a lighter, less intrusive piece of hardware in favor
of something like smart glasses or even embedded chips
that work along with glasses or a similar innovation.
Knowing what is known today and not being able to
see exactly how technology will look tomorrow, the best
effort to define the EDC is to say that it is a “constantly
evolving, size independent space, containing switch, storage,
and compute equipment, located geographically close
enough to meet response and latency requirements of the
application(s), while balancing cost and reliability to
achieve expected results.”9
Only time and evolving standards will tell what an EDC
will physically morph into and how it will be defined in
the future. For now, we can only speculate that it will be
“sort of greenish but with more dimensions” while adhering
to the principles mentioned in the above definition.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY: Sean Kelly, RCDD, is head of
Application Engineering at Rosenberger North America. He
is an industry veteran with more than 20 years of experience in
various technical, engineering, and business roles with industry
leading connectivity manufacturers. He also plays an instrumental
part in driving emerging technologies and solutions, such as
MDCs. He can be reached at seankelly@rosenbergerna.com.
REFERENCES:
1. Branscombe, Mary. “Five Edge Data Center Myths,”
Uptime Institute, 6 December 2017.
2. Miller, Rich. “Cloud Data Centers Are Coming to the
Suburbs,” Data Center Frontier, 15 August 2018.
3. Miller, Rich. “AFCOM: No, the Cloud Isn’t Replacing
The Data Center,” Data Center Frontier, 21 March 2019.
4. Cappuccio, Dave. “The Data Center is Dead,” Gartner Blog
Network, 26 July 2018.
5. Dano, Mike. “Edge Computing Mini Data Centers Are Rolling
Out for Real. What's Next?” Light Reading, 8 November 2019.
6. Ibid
7. Ibid
8. “Edge, 5G And Data Centres: The Beginning Of The End Or
The End Of The Beginning?” Data Economy, 15 October 2019.
9. Definition of EDC derived by Sean Kelly, RCDD.
link