And what we need to make it happen.
Digital technology is rapidly transforming our world. Manufacturers are turning to IoT to maximize production. Doctors are analyzing data from wearables to improve treatment. Streaming, artificial intelligence (AI), and augmented reality are revolutionizing media.
Making these new services an everyday reality requires a fast, robust, scalable, and economical digital infrastructure, an invisible fabric that ensures that everything just works. And we need it now: cloud services will hit $332 billion this year, a 23% increase from the year before. Some cloud providers estimate that they may need to build 50 to 100 data centers per year.1
Digital infrastructure will also become one of our most important tools for combating climate change with cloud- and edge-based services being deployed to fine-tune the consumption of power, water, and other resources inside factories, commercial buildings, and homes.
1. IDC 2. S&P/451 Research 3. Qualcomm 4. Rethink Research
Popularity, however, creates problems. This exponential surge in demand puts intense pressure on cloud service providers, carriers, and others to accomplish far more work with the same, or less, power, equipment, rack space, and real estate. Beijing, Amsterdam, and other cities have begun to place power and water caps on datacenters.
Datacenter managers have managed to handle the surge in traffic while keeping costs like energy relatively flat through better cooling systems, new rack designs, and the extensive use of virtualization. Datacenters, in fact, still only consume 1% to 2% of the world’s electricity.2
Many of these innovations, however, are showing their age. Without new technologies, some fear datacenter power could increase by 3x to 7x while 5G power consumption could triple.3 Meeting demand would require more servers, racks, and real estate, which in turn means higher costs, higher emissions, and slowing demand. We need to start thinking inside the box and changing the basic architecture of infrastructure.
