EXPERT OPINION
THE HYPERSCALE
DATA CENTRES
THAT SERVICE
PROVIDERS HAVE
BEEN INVESTING
IN WILL NOT BE
ABLE TO FULLY
COVER THE
NEW NETWORK,
COMPUTING
AND STORAGE
REQUIREMENTS
OF THE
COMING YEARS.
take place at the speed of light. Along with
future 5G services, this will require a fibre
optic network along the roadside.
There would have to be servers or micro
data centres on the roads or at base
stations every 15 kilometres to guarantee
virtually latency-free interaction and
processing of the most important data
on site. Exchanging data using remote
cloud data centres would be too slow to
control traffic and ensure there are no
accidents with the typical one to two
milliseconds latency.
So, while the cloud could compile,
analyse and store all traffic data that is
not critically time-bound, the edge will
require micro data centres as there is
zero tolerance for latency and a need for
unconditional availability.
Shibu Vahid, Business Head – Special
Projects, Middle East Africa and Turkey
at R&M
www.intelligentdatacentres.com
This latency, hyper-interactivity and
decentralised intelligence will play a
role in numerous other applications
in the digitalised world. These include
industrial manufacture, industrial
Ethernet and robotics, 5G and video
communication, smart grids, the Internet
of Things (IoT) as well as Blockchain, AI
and AR applications.
Edge computing can support all these
tasks by shortening the path between
the acquisition, collection, analysis and
feedback of intelligence to the networks.
Micro data centre requirements
The locations at which micro data
centres will have to be deployed could be
demanding. To minimise risks, application
sites will have to be chosen carefully and
edge solutions will have to be as robust
and maintenance-free as possible.
They should also be able to run
independently without specialist
personnel. But there will still have to
be safe rooms or containers to protect
micro data centres from manipulation,
environmental influences and
electromagnetic loads.
Installation and operation at the edge will
have to be made as simple as possible
with the ‘plug and play’ principle applied
to connectivity and IT. Micro data centres
will require the ability to be connected
directly to fibre optic or broadband
Issue 01
37