April/May/June 2020 I 41
Hyperscale and Cloud
As investment in data centers increases and user bandwidth expands, network architecture topologies in support of both
hyperscale and cloud have evolved from a central campus structure (Figure 4) to more distributed nodes (Figure 5). This
may require remote facilities deployed at the edge to support low latency content distribution and transactions, equating
to exponentially more connected devices, cabling and infrastructure, and physical interconnects.
FIGURE 4: Data center campus connectivity of the past (centralized campus). Source: Illustration derived from proprietary
information collected and analyzed by the author.
FIGURE 5: Data center campus connectivity of the future: How data center campus connectivity has changed to support
hyperscale and cloud. Source: Illustration derived from proprietary information collected and analyzed by the author.
Data Center Campus
POP/Colocation
Data Center Campus
POP/Colocation
Edge Cloud Node
