DATA CENTRES
The first trend is certainly the evolution of cloud computing: this is certainly nothing new, and in fact it is estimated that between 70 and 90% of organisations now use the cloud, and are becoming more expert in choosing solutions that are now less frequently ‘individual’ – that is, multicloud. According to several surveys, the cloud represents the first choice for the development of IT infrastructures, however there is also a trend towards what is called Hybrid IT, i.e. a portfolio of different technologies and different cloud providers that coexist for the various applications used by an organisation. Investments such as on-premise data centres, i.e. run by companies themselves, are not expected to grow: indeed some experts go so far as to say that in the future these will fall from the current 70% to less than 20% of new solutions, and will be replaced by solutions comprising a mix of Cloud services, known as SAAS - Software As A Service – for example, Google Mail.
Common location (Co Lo) services for installing company servers, IAAS - Infrastructure As A Service
Cloud services that offer standard platforms for building cloud solutions, such as AWS or Micro- soft Azure: also known as PAAS - Platform As A Service.
However, the cloud is neither the final destination nor even just a simple tool, rather it is generating opportunities thanks to the possibility of processing data and providing digital services to so-called digital touchpoints,
i.e. all those devices that interact with users but are connected and make up the IOT. The figure below represents the complex and
convergent scenario in which the cloud represents both a solution for enterprise IT, but also a point of intersection with digital touchpoints and therefore an opportunity for digital business. The ecosystem described above also shows edge data centres, which are now a reality; while very large data centres (hyperscale) are driving growth, surveys predict that by 2025 all operators will at least double their investments in this segment. Hyperscale data centres, driven by cloud and CoLo, grew by 25% in 2019 in FLAP-D: to make a comparison, in 2015 about 65 MW of data centres for CoLo were built, with more than 200 transactions, while in the last year the first five data centres exceeded this power on their own.
Future applications, however, will increasingly
need edge to mitigate the effects of latency due to network congestion: already 10 years ago Amazon estimated that a 100 ms delay in response can cause a 1% drop in sales, while it is believed that in financial trading, a 5 ms delay compared to the competition can cause losses of up to $ 4 million per second, so much so that the MiFID II directive on financial markets has established the principle of latency equalisation to guarantee fair competition. Increasingly “pervasive” technologies, such as smart cities or self-driving cars will require low latency for even more important reasons, making architecture with small local data centres necessary.
The growth of the entire ecosystem therefore features various challenges, ranging from spaces, to energy and the human capital needed to create and manage new data centres. Some presentations focused above all on cybersecurity, which is becoming essential given the importance of the business (according to IDC, by 2021 50% of GDP will be digitised) and the number of devices, which in the next five years could reach 50 billion. Various guidelines are in progress, and the EN50600 standard for data centres includes physical security as an essential requirement: the classes of protection defined in this standard in fact represent a global security approach aimed at ensuring business continuity in the event of accidental events, cyber-attacks, hacking and unauthorised access. Everything is framed not as simple requirements, but rather as a true risk assessment, using for example the requirements of EN31010; this perspective gives a wider view of cybersecurity, which in the strictest sense traditionally refers to hacker attacks over the internet. One of the more interesting cases presented, for example, referred to Hydro (www.
hydro.com), a company that suffered damages of 30-35 million euros due to a ‘cyber-attack’ that started inside one of its own factories, a case of so-called ‘internal contamination’. A huge, rapidly growing business such as data centres is by its very nature complex, and therefore new skills and professionalism will always be needed.
www.acr-news.com
November 2020 35
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