Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1219491
April/May/June 2020 I 45 FIGURE 14: To lower labor costs significantly, it takes continual introductions of faster, easier, and more reliable data center component innovations. This is essential for any enterprise data center, especially for a colocation data center's profitability and that of e-commerce retail. FIGURE 15: In order to support future connectivity growth needs which are often unpredictable, companies are left with the costly alternative of overbuilding their existing infrastructures, expediting materials and construction or, even worse, delaying product launches until additional capacity can become available. Labor Costs: As previously shown in Figure 1, more than 20 percent of data center infrastructure spend can be attributed to labor costs, including cabling installation, testing, and operational support. This is breaking budgets, which limits service growth, product revenue, and quality of service. Although optical fiber and test equipment manufacturers, for example, have introduced impressive advance- ments in packing more fiber strands in reduced outer diameter (OD) cables and have introduced more automated and faster test equip- ment, more must be done to save on labor costs. FIGURE 13: The push towards 100 Gb/s to 400 Gb/s optics at increasingly longer connectivity distances due to hyperscale and cloud architectures requires the utmost in connectivity performance with the highest quality infrastructure components. Image source: © NRL/NASA/Chris Gunn. Performance and Quality: Bandwidth requirements are growing exponentially each year and require the highest quality cabling media and materials, impeccable installation practices, and an ideal environment to achieve performance specifications. Now more than ever, designers and installers should adhere to the installation best practices and standards guidelines in ANSI/BICSI 002-2019, Data Center Design and Implementation Best Practices. Time to Market: The expediency in which connected infrastructure must be deployed and turned over to production is critical in meeting online service demands. Based on experience, in most cases, teams are failing to meet deadlines due to their existing infrastructures' inability to accommodate emerging technologies, as well as meeting high-band- width and connected infrastructure growth demands; others may be meeting deadlines but at high costs.