Antoine Harb, Team Leader Middle East and North Africa at Kingston Technology explains that the advent of 5G technology will usher into a new age of data centers, which are capable of capturing, processing and transferring data generated by 5G-enabled applications
Antoine Harb, Team Leader Middle East and North Africa at Kingston Technology
The steady rollout of the highspeed 5G technology, the successor of the 4G LTE network, has been generating much excitement in today’s ultra-connected and increasingly data-driven world. The excitement stems from the endless possibilities that the 5G network offers amid talks of smart cities, autonomous vehicles, mixed reality technologies and other forms of connected and integrated services and state-of-the-art tools and devices.
Compared to 4G, 5G is a lot faster – 100 times faster on average – can connect up to one million devices per square kilometer and boasts of more bandwidth and lower latency. Once fully deployed and utilized, 5G is going to impact people’s daily lives and transform businesses in more ways than one. It is no wonder that many service providers worldwide have set their sights on and are now moving towards the adoption of the technology, with a Gartner study forecasting a USD 4.2-billion 5G wireless network infrastructure revenue in 2020.
This reflects a USD 2.2 billion growth from 2019 as noted by the same Gartner report. In the UK, the University of Sussex is one of the leading institutions conducting advanced research on 5G to fully maximize its potential. It performed in 2018 one of the first tests of its kind in Britain designed to build the capability of and resolve key issues related to the technology before becoming commercially available.
Data created by machines and other applications supported by a 5G network will be exponential in magnitude compared to those generated from consumer-driven digital applications in video calling, telehealth, e-commerce, e-learning and entertainment portals. As the 5G rollout will lead to a surge in demand for data capacities, what does this mean for the data center industry?
Many data center providers are already gearing up to implement an infrastructure strategy that can handle the expected data inundation and high demand for faster communication and networking services in the years to come. Providing a 5G-ready data center with more advanced structures will be imperative and fundamental amid the increasing need for more speed, flexibility and optimal availability with a lower risk of downtime and service interruption. The demand for data centers that can process an enormous amount of information that is coming from autonomous vehicles, sensors in the streets of smart cities and other machines, for example, will only increase.
Larger data centers will play a huge role in providing the infrastructure critical to this high-tech, connected world. In addition, micro edge data centers, which are at locations closer to where the data is being generated and consumed, are also gaining traction among enterprises seeking to ensure that their information and communications technology system is ready for the future. The much smaller edge data centers ensure faster response and more efficient data flow as well.
Further, requiring less power, micro edge data centers are equipped with capacities to handle huge chunks of data generated by many 5G applications. They are aligned with communication and data storage, mostly on SSD. Kingston Technology has been creating memory and storage solutions that can handle the needed volume, speed and other future requirements of 5G-driven devices.
Needless to say, 5G technology is going to be a game-changer. Providers of 5G-ready data centers are better positioned and will have the upper hand to meet new needs arising from the rollout of this next-generation technology.
Looking at where the trend is going, reimagining a purpose-built data center infrastructure capable of capturing, processing and transferring data generated by 5G-enabled applications will eventually become the norm within the data center industry of the future.
