INDUSTRY INTELLIGENCE POWERED BY THE DCA
Only Edge networks can provide the high connectivity and low
latency required by the IoT to meet users’ expectations and
demands for instant access to content and services.
Edge Computing will be able to handle
more than a traditional network with
many more transactions per second over
many more locations and architectures,
but how and when will this infrastructure
be delivered?
Conclusion
can be better managed in an Edge
environment. The data is often governed
by local legislation and now that it can be
held in smaller data centres closer to the
point of use it becomes easier to meet the
legal requirements in the local region.
The fact that half of our respondents
believe Edge Computing will be the
biggest driver of new data centres, tallies
with our own convictions.
We believe that the Edge of the network
will continue to be at the epicentre of
Data security
One of the major factors that needs to be
considered is data centre security, with
cyberattacks increasing in both frequency
and scale.
Problems originating from the physical
infrastructure have also been found
to be behind outages in recent years.
Some experts have suggested that Edge
Computing potentially represents a soft
underbelly for cybersecurity.
For some, the use of the word ‘Edge’ has
allowed users to assume the security of
these systems is not as important as local
or cloud systems.
However, moving forward, clients will
be expecting significant investment in
security and Disaster Recovery processes
as well as the physical maintenance and
security of these localised data centres.
Investment in telecoms
Another key consideration is that the
increasing adoption of Edge and cloud-
based infrastructure for both social and
business use is also placing greater
demands on the distribution network in
terms of latency, bandwidth and capacity.
Stephen Whatling, Chairman at Business
Critical Solutions
Our summer report, which is available
to download from our website, also
highlights this issue with three-quarters
of respondents agreeing that the
telecoms industry needed to provide
this investment. Less than 2% of all
those surveyed believed that the current
infrastructure would be able to support
the current predictions of growth in data.
This is likely cause for concern.
The need for power
Similarly, these new data centres will need
power. The thousands of servers across all
connected countries will need to be located
and designed with energy in mind. It is
perhaps worth noting too that countries
which can’t support the wider network
demands will quickly fall behind in the race
to realise the value of AI and AR.
The opportunity
The increase in data over the next five
years will place a lot of pressure on the
telecoms network. It is the telecoms
industry that will need to continue to
invest and upgrade capacity to ensure that
the infrastructure supports the growing
demand for data flows to and from the
Edge and the cloud.
22
Issue 13
There is no doubt that massive increase
in the data that is available from billions
of devices and the rise of AI is both
an opportunity and a challenge for
businesses. Companies that can handle
the scale, analyse the data and monetise
its true value will have a real advantage.
www.intelligentdatacentres.com