Another new year is upon us. That means most of us made resolutions to better our lives. Let's be honest, some of us have probably strayed from them already. However, if one of your resolutions was to become a fiber optics specialist, then I can help.
The emerging and ever increasing market for fiber communications is one that puzzles a lot of people. Those in this industry need to understand market trends and development for fiber optics, which is now encroaching into many aspects of our lives. Fiber optic cabling is becoming a vital infrastructure in three major areas, and we might not even be aware of it: commercial real estate, intelligent building networks and data centers.
Commercial Real Estate
Today’s commercial buildings are challenging high-tech facilities. These buildings must provide efficient and cost-effective environments for the information-age-based worker. This can be done through optimization of its structure, systems, services and management, as well as the connections between systems. Productivity is the driving force in designing and building these high-tech buildings for the highly mobile worker.
Communications is fundamental to providing voice, data, video, security and access control services. To integrate these systems and their services, the cabling system must provide a common infrastructure (cabling and cabling distribution method). The convergence or integration of wired and wireless systems over fiber optics offers scalability, enabling addition or removal of devices wherever and whenever required (i.e., moves, additions and changes). It facilitates analog to digital and IP networked migration while enabling new IT growth to be accounted for up front.
Intelligent Building Networks
Intelligent buildings harness technology and link building systems to supply more efficiency, higher productivity and increased comfort. The global trend among innovative buildings is toward a comprehensive infrastructure solution. Most buildings feature systems where each requiring its own control, management and monitoring. Without a common infrastructure linking them, these systems can accumulate a lifetime of unnecessary cost.
With a fiber optic backbone, all of a building’s systems—from building automation systems and communications systems, to video surveillance and access control—are converged over the same, common infrastructure. This provides an enhanced level of efficiency and cross-system performance.
Data Centers
Whether supporting the needs of a single company or thousands of different clients, continuously operating data centers/headends are essential to the flow, processing and storage of business critical information. Today's data center must deliver a defined set of services to users on demand, with little to no interruption.
This extreme service reliability is paramount to data center installations and must be addressed with high-performance, fiber optic infrastructure solutions that allow high density, as well as ease of deployment and use. To support the use of increasingly complex applications such as cloud computing, content delivery, e-commerce and data backup, the need for scalable infrastructures, power and cooling, and higher bandwidth continue to grow— intensifying the demand for better connectivity solutions in the data center.
Fiber optic infrastructure solutions are being engineered for optimal deployment of mission-critical enterprise networks and data centers, supporting network connections anywhere from 1Gps to 1Tbps.
James Donovan is the Vice President of Creative and Education Services at CommScope