In early 2019, American Tower acquired Colo Atl, a colocation business in Atlanta. What makes this significant?
American Tower owns the most extensive wireless infrastructure in the world. The acquisition marks a merging of the data center and wireless sectors. It is representative of a growing trend.
It’s one of the five emerging colocation trends for 2019. This year will see more integration between data centers and telecommunication towers.
Companies need far less data center space when they take advantage of both Edge and Hyperscale computing. They can further reduce costs by building multi-story, modular data centers.
Let’s Get More Info about each of these top colocation trends.
1. Continued Rise of Edge Computing
Edge computing also gained popularity. Edge computing infrastructures involved integration with wireless towers.
By distributing their data center infrastructures to the edge, businesses can better connect to digital supply chains.
Thus, they have the ability to adapt to changing business demands. They can also improve performance while decreasing costs.
For 2019, the extra push is to integrate hyperscale and edge data centers. Thus, colocation trends to look for are any that support the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence (AI), big data, autonomous vehicles, and more.
2. Efficiency of Hyperscale Computing
Hyperscale computing consists of a distributed architecture that expands and contracts as the need of your organization changes. It involve hundreds of thousands of servers working together on a high-speed network.
Hyperscale computing accommodates the ever-increasing demand for behind-the-scenes computing resources, but they don’t take up additional space and the electricity and cooling that would come with it.
Benefits for Large Datacenters
The keys to hyperscale computing are standardization, redundancy, automation, high-availability (HA) and high-performance computing (HPC). Extremely large data centers take advantage of hyperscale computing.
A traditional corporate data center supports hundreds of physical servers along with several thousand virtual machines (VMs). However, a hyperscale data center can support thousands of servers and millions of VMs.
Benefits for Smaller Datacenters
A great deal of architectural changes and open source software have been created for hyperscale data centers. You can expect these innovations to trickle down to the smaller data centers as well.
These features help them use physical space more efficiently. Such efficiency uses less power and allows the network to respond more quickly to end-user’s needs.
3. Multi-Facility Data Center Campuses
Another colocation trend that supports integration goals is multi-facility data centers. Multi-facility data centers offer more advantages than standalone centers.
With modular design and fiber-optics, businesses can create several facilities on one campus. Even the largest campus has room to grow with this design.
Also, the physical perimeter, facility, and cyber security all remain manageable. All these benefits reduce business risk.
Multiple Stories
In the United States, in particular, more multi-story data centers are rising. Companies get more value out of their property by building up. They can build powerful data centers on smaller campuses.
Modular Builds
In the push to build data centers faster and with efficiency, data center providers are adapting to the infrastructure supply chain. They are providing modular builds and just-in-time inventory.
Colocation companies are building megawatt hyperscale data centers in shorter amounts of time. Even more, the demand is on a global scale. To keep up, they have shifted construction from stick-built construction to prefabricated.
Rather than construct on-site, most of the materials are pre-assembled modules. Once delivered to the site, it’s a matter of assembly. The resulting shortened time to market reduces constructions costs.
The result is an adaptive supply chain with a low cost of capital. Providers can shift components across construction sites. And, they can provide volume pricing for large projects.
4. Wireless Network Speed
Fast networking speed is crucial to keeping up with the demands of cloud services and hedge computing. So, another colocation trend involves upgrading for faster network speed.
Employing 5G wireless networking is the way to go. Another is tapping into the newest and fastest cables, nicknamed “internet bridges.”
5G Wireless Networking
The next generation of wireless networking, 5G, impacts all data centers. 5G supports 100 times the devices and 1,000 times the volume than previous networks.
It does this with ten times lower latency. This, in turn, improves battery life for users’ wireless devices. While 5G hasn’t integrated everywhere yet, companies are planning for full integration by 2020.
Submarine Cable
In 2018, the powerhouse hyperscale cloud companies, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google upgraded to new submarine cable. Those in the industry dubbed these cables “internet bridges.”
These cables interconnect the world, conveying network traffic faster and better than ever.
In 2019, colo providers should expect a boom in hybrid cloud infrastructures. Companies will seek new applications to leverage these ultra-fast submarine cables.
5. Global Data Center Suppliers
With today’s technology, global data center suppliers are no longer a luxury. This may be less of a trend of colocation and more a fundamental change in data center philosophy.
Global data center services are now essential to remaining competitive. Thus, to become a leading global supplier, you must have locations across the globe.
To be a leader in the global data center sector, you must also have global operating procedures in place. Along with those are global design standards, and a firm global business model.
That model should include clear contract guidelines, pricing, and workload balance projections.
Colocation Trends to Look For
In 2019, colo providers will continue to expand their networking. They will provide customers with hybrid-network solutions that will accommodate ever-expanding workloads.
Colocation providers will continue to rethink infrastructure and retool. They will better leverage the on-premises data center space to make them concurrently more powerful and more efficient.
If you have any questions about colocation for your company, please contact us or email us at sales@colocrossing.com!
