Emerson Network Power has identified strategies for organizations to better support edge facilities amid continued explosion of data generated by people and devices.
Because of emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing, more organizations are now moving their storage, networking and bandwidth closer to users or in edge facilities. These facilities, also known as “neighborhood” data centers, face unique challenges of efficiency, availability and resiliency as they receive, process, and store huge amounts of data.
“We are expecting exponential growth in digital consumption this year, causing a spike in data that is being generated, collected and analyzed. Because of this, there is a growing importance on neighborhood data centers, especially in the areas of retail and banking,” said Daniel Sim, director, channel business, Emerson Network Power in Asia. “These facilities require critical infrastructure that is flexible, scalable and cost-effective to address new challenges at the edge.”
Below are strategies to future-proof the network edge:
1. Consider design flexibility
Neighborhood data centers, or edge facilities, are receiving, processing and storing huge amounts of data as more networks and devices are becoming increasingly connected to them. Gartner predicts that by 2020, there will be 6.4 billion connected devices because of IoT and this can cause concerns for uptime and reliability in edge facilities. Jay Wirts, vice president and general manager of IT management, Emerson Network Power says, “When it comes to edge, organizations need to think about growth both vertically and horizontally. It’s not just about deploying facilities that can scale to accommodate growth within a specific location, but also quickly deploying facilities in new locations.”
2. Ensure visibility at the edge
Managing several remote facilities can be a challenge and often require additional skilled manpower, which can be costly. To save on cost while ensuring insight into the neighborhood data center, organizations must enable real-time visibility of all IT networks, from core to the edge.
3. Resiliency in all levels
Because of today’s interconnected society, users expect applications to always be available. In the recent Ponemon Study on Data Center Downtime sponsored by Emerson Network Power, it found that the cost of downtime has increased to $8,851 per minute or an average of $740,357. UPS failure still accounts as the number one cause of data center outage.