We have reached a tipping point in technology, where there are now more connected devices than people in the world. By now, it has become clear to all that the data center industry is undergoing profound changes, where the Internet of Things (IoT) and ensuing demand for connectivity, speed and processing power has pushed the need for these capabilities closer to end-users — forcing solutions to the “edge”.
This new wave of innovation that is sweeping through the data center industry is driven predominantly by the need for connectivity and the more complex government regulations on data and security. Data center architectures are quickly evolving to form a new hybrid computing ecosystem – one that is a combination of Edge and centralized computing. While in the past the focus was on improving the management of one facility, organisations are now managing multiple facilities with virtualized environments in the emerging ecosystem of hybrid cloud computing. IDC for instance, has estimated that by 2018, 40 percent of IoT-created data will be stored, processed, analyzed, and acted upon close to, or at the edge of, the network.
It is a well-known fact that organisations are struggling to meet their end-users’ insatiable and exponential appetite for information – this has created a paradoxical situation which presents a unique opportunity for solution providers. As key stakeholders in the data center industry, we need to move beyond just providing the software tools and architectures, but also help organisations embark on new integrated systems between IT and OT (connected devices). This will include delivering digitized services to simplify the ecosystem and ensure the industry is being responsible with its use of energy.
The biggest opportunity for the data center industry lies in the effective use of the vast quantities of data unleashed by IoT, combined with big data analytics as a catalyst for the next wave of innovation. As an industry, we must not only be able to instrument a data center and provide data to the data center operators, we must also be able to consolidate millions of data points every minute from multiple data centers and use sophisticated data mining tools to spot trends. Not just in one data center, but in the hybrid ecosystem as whole. When done collectively, data can be turned into actionable information and the new ecosystem which we operate in will become more simple, predictive, proactive, and effective.
If the industry can come together to achieve that, we will be able to perform true benchmarking with universal metrics across the entire industry, and with that, we are looking at the possibility of true machine learning – not just machine learning on one data center in one location, but machine learning throughout the entire data center ecosystem – where not only does one company benefits but the ecosystem as a whole benefits.
For us to achieve this vision, there are immediate challenges that the industry needs to help our customers address. Many organizations face transitional challenges moving into the hybrid computing ecosystem. In their minds, they have to choose between either power or flexibility – until now, regional data centers have offered a large-scale solution, while local gateways and embedded devices catered to more local increases in demand. The first is slow to build and bring online but they offer plenty of raw computing power, while the second is quick but lacks computing power.
Schneider Electric believes that edge computing is the answer to help organizations bridge this divide. This architecture of the future will likely have several variations; it could be a gateway or embedded device, or it could be a micro data center. Schneider Electric has been helping our customers meet their business objectives through the adoption of the micro data center approach – allowing their IT to reduce latency and quickly add capacity while ensuring a secure and easy to manage environment. The deployment of intelligent software solutions also enables data center managers to optimize facility performance and maintain the integrity of the network’s connectivity while complying with increased government regulations on data and security.
Given the fast pace and dynamic business environment that most organizations operate in, a micro data center will essentially serve as a “plug and play” solution, allowing private clouds and converged IT systems to scale accordingly to meet end user demands. Micro data centers also allow specific industry verticals such as retail, manufacturing and telecommunications to share and analyze the ever-growing amounts of data – a crucial step towards achieving universal benefits for the entire ecosystem.
As we move into the future, the data center industry must continue to explore and create new architectures to support the needs of our customers and their end users. We must be able to drive simplicity, predictability, and efficiency throughout the data center ecosystem – whether these are small edge data centers, big colocation facilities, or industrial data centers – these will go a long way in helping us solve the big problems facing our customers and our industry.
Pankaj Sharma is Vice President, Asia Pacific, IT Business, at Schneider Electric