Guest blog by Steven Carlini, Senior
Director of Data Center Marketing, Schneider Electric
I have not heard this much buzz in the IT
industry since the early 1990s – well, since the original internet was
introduced. Now the Internet of Things
(IoT) is used to denote wireless connectivity of devices, systems and services
that go beyond the traditional M2M (machine to machine).
Today, the Internet is almost wholly
dependent on human beings for information.
Nearly all of the roughly 50 petabytes of available data on the Internet
was first captured and created by human beings by typing, pressing a video
record or picture button, or scanning a bar code.
Data is being generated by everything from
Coke machines to the 20-30 billion more devices hitting the market (many of
them wearable). This large quantity of
data will need to be processed and analyzed in real time. The IoT works by connecting these remote
devices to a large centralized data center providing information on status,
location, functionality, and so on. IoT
will generate massive amounts of input data from sources that are globally
distributed so transferring that data to a single large data center thousands
of miles away for processing will not be technically and economically viable.
This will have a transformational effect on
the data center market and technologies in order to support it. Processing large quantities of IoT data in
real time will demand the data centers be located closer to the data source to
deliver security, capacity and speed (reduced latency).
The best way to do this? How about dropping large numbers of micro
data centers closer to where the people are?
Seems to make sense to have a greater number of smaller data centers to
support the real time need. Since there
will need to be hundreds of these micro data centers per large city, you don’t
want every one to be different. This
begs for standardization and prefabrication of these smaller data centers to
ensure reliability, lower cost and enhanced serviceability all achieved through
economies of scale.
I know there are not that many people
wearing Google Glass yet. But before you
know it there could be. Plus you could
also be wearing 5 other IoT devices you never even thought of that will improve
or enhance your life in many ways. But
only if the internet is up and your connection is fast and secure….. brought to you by the micro data center near you.
Nice informative article. Data Centers are the backbone of organizations runniing online and hence data center are the IOT also.
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