Harness the 5G boom: Get your data center infrastructure ready
The worldwide rollout of 5G is picking up steam. As more and more smartphones become 5G-capable, enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) will certainly be a driving factor for 5G deployments. Market research firm Gartner predicts more than 220 million 5G-capable mobile phones will be sold in 2020 -- representing about 12% of overall sales. The firm also predicts that market penetration will zoom to 489 million units in 2021. MacRumors reports that Apple is expected to shift 80 million 5G-equipped iPhone 12 devices in 2020 alone.
Additionally, analyst firm Grand View Research envisions the global 5G services market reaching US $41.48 billion by the end of 2020 and growing nearly 44% per year through 2027. McKinsey predicts the ultra-reliable low-latency communication made possible by 5G will drive machine-to-machine communications in a wide range of IoT applications, including smart manufacturing, smart city, smart energy, and connected health.
All of this brings us to the question, "Are you prepared?"
If the technology industry has learned anything from the COVID-19 pandemic, it's that technology adoption calendars can be compressed in response to unprecedented demand. Many IT vendors have expressed the sentiment: "We've had to implement our five-year plan in five months."
While no one can predict the pandemic's long-term effects, it's a fair bet that mobile and remote computing are not going to contract. Further, as robotics-based solutions become viable, zero-contact alternatives to in-person activities, ultra-reliable machine-to-machine communication demand will grow.
The important thing to keep in mind is that 5G and the rising need for autonomous and remote applications will not just spark increased demand for bandwidth; all other elements of IT infrastructure will feel the strain, as well.
Storage demands -- both in centralized data lakes and at the edge, near applications -- will increase exponentially in order to store and forward increasing amounts of data. Compute demands will increase, as well, driven by increased adoption of AI and machine learning.
5G is linked inextricably with digital transformation. Since as McKinsey reports, digital transformation initiatives have accelerated by three to four years due to the pandemic, all aspects of data center infrastructure will experience new loads.
There's one more thing to consider: The cloud is far more diaphanous in a 5G world. Centralized data centers can't deliver results fast enough to keep up with last-mile demands. Instead, multi-access edge computing (MEC) sites -- that are located nearer to customers -- will create new levels of responsiveness. This, too, presents a considerable demand on IT infrastructure and on the time, ability, and resources of professional IT teams tasked with deployment.
Five key infrastructure-planning considerations
Because of the demands 5G puts on all aspects of the data center, infrastructure planning must not be an afterthought. Without proper planning and implementation operations run the risk of service interruptions or incurring sudden CAPEX due to unexpected upgrades, which can have a disproportionate impact on customer satisfaction, and therefore profits. Here are five key considerations necessary for preparing for a 5G deployment:
1. You will need to deploy edge computing resources
Edge deployment has long been used by website caching operations to reduce latency when loading high-use image and video files. Multi-access edge computing (an ETSI-defined st
2. You will need to customize resource availability
Because effective 5G deployment decentralizes resources to a level previously unseen, the need to optimize resource availability for each MEC, data center, and radio zone becomes essential. To reduce excessive capital expenditure and unnecessary downti
3. You will need to handle the inevitable jump in power and cooling demand
What happens when you pump a lot more data through your pipes? What happens when you need to store lots more data and act on that data? You add servers, racks, and facilities, which bring a concomitant rise in power utilization. In a
4. You will need to find ways to save energy
Staying with the topic of power concerns, if you don't want to be saddled with a huge jump in both CAPEX expenditures for power infrastructure and OPEX costs for all that power, you're going to need to be proactive about reducing your energy demands. B
5. You will need to manage many of these edge resources remotely
As 5G becomes more ubiquitous, those edge computing resources and MEC installations will need to be deployed to most communities and radio zones. It may not be practical to expect IT professionals to be on-site for each of these mini data centers. Ther
The time to plan is now
The logistics of 5G are different from those of previous cellular technologies, because the inherent data communication speed requires edge resources simply to keep data flowing without propagation delays.
All of this necessitates a re-think of how IT infrastructure is deployed. Large, centralized cloud data centers will still be needed, but 5G necessitates a dynamically evolving balance between centralized and decentralized resources. The clear conclusion is that data center infrastructure is as important in deployment planning as networking infrastructure.
Learn more about Vertiv data center solutions.