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5G and Its Impact On The Data Center Industry

5G and Its Impact On The Data Center Industry

What are the emerging trends for Data Center networking in 2021?

Gartner forecasts that worldwide 5G network infrastructure revenue will double in the next year, with revenue set to reach $4.2 billion in 2020. The analyst firm also adds that 2020-21 will also see an accelerated rollout of 5G in many major cities. 

2021 will see the rise of edge computing, thanks to 5G. In 2020 and beyond, the first applications using 5G’s super high speed, low latency, machine-machine communications will be introduced. These new offerings, such as high-resolution cloud gaming, industrial IoT process control and onsite augmented reality guidance for workers, will demonstrate the value that 5G can unlock. Source

While such applications won’t be widely deployed this year, their potential has already begun reshaping industries, including data center infrastructure and virtualized networking. For example, with 5G’s ability to provide latencies, it will become easier to deploy low-latency 5G applications, and 2020 has already seen data centers preparing for its arrival.

The Eight Trends That Will Shape the Data Center Industry in 2020

Data Centers Must Upgrade

While 5G technology is being rolled out, it is creating a domino effect on existing infrastructure and new investment, particularly relating to data centers. More straightforward aspects such as network and router upgrades are necessary to adapt to 5G, along with more significant updates to existing technologies such as network functions virtualisation (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN). 

According to Moor Insights & Strategy’s 2018 look at investment attributable to 5G, network transformation (56%) is the main focus, followed by the data center (22%) and edge computing (19%).

Source: How 5G will affect the structure of data centers 

Opportunities will exist for both new and existing data centers. Therefore, for the industry to benefit from 5G, the existing structure of data centers has to be taken into account.

5G RAN

According to an article from Data Center Dynamics, there is a lot of flexibility built into the network architecture of 5G that enables it to address a wide range of use cases that are beyond the capabilities of 4G.

“The flexibility includes things such as the desegregation of the control and user plains of the network and also migration towards distributed baseband processing and the radio access network (RAN). In turn, this leads to opportunities for virtualization of RAN network functions, and it enables the convergence of the RAN into the data center 5G space” Source

RAN open standards driven by global network operators as well as OEMs will mean a more unified approach to 5G architecture. This could drive businesses away from traditional OEMs to newer, agile players who can provide services under an open standards environment.

Edge Computing 

Edge computing and 5G will co-evolve with each other, working together in tandem to exploit their best characteristics. 

According to Gartner, edge computing will account for 75% of enterprise-related data by 2025. Currently, this figure stands at 10%

Source: What Edge Computing Means for Infrastructure and Operations Leaders

This considerable upswing is because several applications that 5G is racing to provide require a massive volume of data to be processed at the edge to function effectively. At the moment, there is no efficient way of processing data at the edge and transferring it back to a traditional data center. To fix this, some of that compute capability has to be dragged back out towards the edge.

According to Jamie Birdnow, VP of advanced and core technologies for cloud and hyperscale solutions at Data Center Dynamics, “This means there could be a lot of smaller data centers, distributed geographically in such a way that’s going to make them a little bit more difficult to manage. Connectivity will be important in terms of how we do that,” he added.

One of the critical characteristics of 5G is 5G New Radio (NR) air interface. This provides improved performance through high-speed latency capabilities using new mobile spectrums. Just as the edge supports 5G, 5G will support edge devices by bringing compute and storage closer to the user.

It’s also worth noting that public cloud-scale data centers and more extensive enterprise facilities will be less affected as they are already using distributed processing and are designed to handle increased data flow from the edge. Multi-tenant data centers will be more affected and may have to relocate closer to the edge to provide regional presence points for cloud-scale facilities.

Plan For Agility

It’s safe to assume that data centers will require a considerable change to accommodate 5G. But, there is still a lot that is unknown to us. What we do know is that AI and machine learning will become increasingly popular, and the vast amount of data processed will be on the edge. This means, there will be a shift from cloud-scale data centers to localized, low-latency services.

There will be several hurdles to overcome if data centers are to be ‘future-proofed’ for 5G, such as investing in a decentralized public, private, and hybrid cloud infrastructure that can be distributed to the edge.

There will also be a breaking point in resources to transport data from the edge to central data centers. Therefore, there needs to be a change in current data centers and the way they operate now.

At Legrand, we have everything you need to build and design a 5G compatible data center. Through secure, agile installation, our software integrates with third-party applications. Enjoy flexibility and speed without continually worrying about upgrading your data center infrastructure for years to come.

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