TOMORROW’S
MODERN
DATA CENTER
COVER ARTICLE By Seán Adam
It is said that the only constant in life is change and few in the
ICT industry would disagree that the pace of changes is increasing
at a dramatic rate. Hand-in-hand with this pace of change is the
ever-increasing consumption of data. Cisco claims that by 2022
cellular data usage will eclipse 77 exabytes per month.
That is the number 77 followed by 18 zeroes!
6 I ICT TODAY
However, technology does not drive growth; it simply
enables it. It will be the end applications that define the
reality of 5G and the infrastructure necessary to support
it. Many people already have at least one wearable, such
as a smartwatch or fitness tracker. Combine that with
smartphones and the beginning of a more connected
on-person existence is achieved. Now merge that with
surroundings that integrate traffic and security systems
in smart cities and smart buildings. Overlay with augmented
reality, and the digital world and real world
merge into one. Dreams of fully autonomous cars promise
to transform roadways and, for many people, their
greatest singular time investment in a day, their commute.
Nearer on the horizon will be fleets of drones,
delivering everything from packages, to pizza, to drug
prescriptions. UPS Flight Forward, a subsidiary of UPS,
In part, this will be enabled by emerging technologies,
such as 5G and the next generation WiFi 802.11ax
standard, also known as Wi-Fi 6. These technologies
bring a promise of increased speeds, faster response
(i.e., latency), and the reality of true internet of things
(IoT). The number of connected devices is expected
to exceed 25 billion by 2025.1
Consider what the transition from 4G to 5G looks
like and why this is important to the impact on the data
center of tomorrow. Table 1 includes some of the key
specifications.
The step function improvement in latency and data
rates makes more and larger content more easily available.
This efficiency in accessing data will be a self-fulfilling
prophecy driving the need for a massive increase
in storage.