Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1219491
36 I ICT TODAY LOOKING FORWARD "Many MDC manufacturers are currently installing units in 'tier 2' and 'tier 3' US cities, where there aren't a lot of data centers already." 6 As the number of connected devices grows, there may be a need to move certain pro- cess functions closer and closer to the device or clusters of similar devices. That may necessitate placing a small data center within or attached to a building such as a con- venience store, each concourse of a stadium (some installa- tions happening now) or perhaps at the base of every 5G tower or repeater location. "It's one of the few technological developments that features eggs showing up before chickens. Meaning, data centers for edge computing are beginning to pop up before widespread demand for edge computing services." [Sami Badri, Credit Suisse]. 7 Globally, "We know that to realise the full potential of 5G the prerequisites are a lot of investment in network (upgraded connectivity with more cells, higher density and plenty of fibre), a lot of investment in compute (lots of smaller scale data centre capacity close to customers) and more spectrum. Within the data centre, network upgrades will be needed with changes to switching and routers. Interconnection will be key, and we will hear a lot of talk about Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN). This all suggests that most of the short-term growth opportunities are within and around the telecoms supply chain and small-scale data centre construction and repurposing. However, as 5G densities increase, opportunities for existing data centres should emerge." 8 Soon the industry may experience the need for these micro edges to be more mobile than they are today to accommodate temporary events, such as concerts, festi- vals, and sporting events like the PGA tour. As more and more non-Zigbee supported IoT devices make their way into homes, the need may come to have neighborhood edges. Eventually, many years from now, people may not be able to tolerate neighborhood latency for functions that can only be dreamt of today and will need micro edge functions inside the house. While personal hand - held devices have tons of computing power, and the asso- ciated operating systems have streamlined on device pro- cesses to save time, there is a goal to eventually remove the processing function from the actual device and allow it to be a lighter, less intrusive piece of hardware in favor of something like smart glasses or even embedded chips that work along with glasses or a similar innovation. Knowing what is known today and not being able to see exactly how technology will look tomorrow, the best effort to define the EDC is to say that it is a "constantly evolving, size independent space, containing switch, stor - age, and compute equipment, located geographically close enough to meet response and latency requirements of the application(s), while balancing cost and reliability to achieve expected results." 9 Only time and evolving standards will tell what an EDC will physically morph into and how it will be defined in the future. For now, we can only speculate that it will be "sort of greenish but with more dimensions" while adher - ing to the principles mentioned in the above definition. AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY: Sean Kelly, RCDD, is head of Application Engineering at Rosenberger North America. He is an industry veteran with more than 20 years of experience in various technical, engineering, and business roles with industry leading connectivity manufacturers. He also plays an instrumental part in driving emerging technologies and solutions, such as MDCs. He can be reached at seankelly@rosenbergerna.com. REFERENCES: 1. Branscombe, Mary. "Five Edge Data Center Myths," Uptime Institute, 6 December 2017. 2. Miller, Rich. "Cloud Data Centers Are Coming to the Suburbs," Data Center Frontier, 15 August 2018. 3. Miller, Rich. "AFCOM: No, the Cloud Isn't Replacing The Data Center," Data Center Frontier, 21 March 2019. 4. Cappuccio, Dave. "The Data Center is Dead," Gartner Blog Network, 26 July 2018. 5. Dano, Mike. "Edge Computing Mini Data Centers Are Rolling Out for Real. What's Next?" Light Reading, 8 November 2019. 6. Ibid 7. Ibid 8. "Edge, 5G And Data Centres: The Beginning Of The End Or The End Of The Beginning?" Data Economy, 15 October 2019. 9. Definition of EDC derived by Sean Kelly, RCDD.