EDITOR’S QUESTION
one of the key areas – cooling. With a
digital twin in use, those managing a
data centre (DC) can better plan layout
changes and greatly reduce the risk that
a new cage or rack will lead to an outage
or great inefficiencies.
MARK FENTON,
PRODUCT MANAGER
AT FUTURE FACILITIES
utting key infrastructure
in the hands of an
Infrastructure-as-a-
Service (IaaS) supplier
can provide a number of
benefits to a business
including reducing costs and adding
flexibility. For an organisation looking to
make this switch though, the key area
to look at is reliability. With so much
dependent on having infrastructure up and
running 24/7, the impact of an outage or
downtime is huge and can result in lost
customers, sales and revenue.
P
To help mitigate the chances of an
outage, organisations need to look for
IaaS suppliers that use a digital twin in
their planning and operations which can
help reduce the risk of downtime from
32
Issue 08
WITH SO MUCH
DEPENDENT
ON HAVING
INFRASTRUCTURE
UP AND RUNNING
24/7, THE IMPACT
OF AN OUTAGE
OR DOWNTIME IS
HUGE AND CAN
RESULT IN LOST
CUSTOMERS,
SALES AND
REVENUE.
In fact, recent independent research
commissioned by Future Facilities found
that DC businesses that use a digital
twin are three times more likely to not
suffer an outage at all. By better planning
designs and deployments, both IT and
facilities teams can collaborate on
deployments and the running of a data
centre to help reduce the chances and
risks of a possible outage.
Looking to the future and with the
advent of 5G, we could even see more
providers offering IaaS. For example,
with the need for more cell sites and
Edge data centres to support 5G, mobile
operators may soon become IaaS
providers themselves. In doing so, mobile
operators can unlock the extra value of
their own networks and provide a new
service to business customers.
However, just as with DC operators,
network operators will also need to
ensure that they can provide a strong,
reliable service to their customers or
risk quickly losing trust. By carefully
modelling Edge data centre setups with
a digital twin, network operators too
can reach the reliability level they need
for cooling without adding extra and
unnecessary costs. ◊
www.intelligentdatacentres.com