Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1219491
50 I ICT TODAY AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY: Steve Cheng is CEO and principal architect of Swick Designs. He has spent more than 20 years successfully designing, building, and operating the world's most advanced connected network infrastructures for companies like Microsoft, Facebook, and Google. Known by insiders as one of the industry's leading experts, Steve has helped shape and define best-in-class connectivity and infrastructure design principles, cabling and component specification standards, and installation and operations best practices. Most recently, Steve designed and patented the first and only high capacity 144-f (192-f upcoming), self-cleaning and self-protecting low-loss universal fiber connec- tor. Steve is on a mission to bring true innovation to the market by creating groundbreaking solutions that have been developed from the ground up, designed specifically to solve the core challenges faced by designers, installers, and operators in supporting the incredible demands of physical connectivity. Steve can be reached at steve@swickdesigns.com. REFERENCES: 1. "Market Research Future, Structured Cabling Market Research Report-Global Forecast to 2022," Market Research Future, January 2018. 2. Nielsen, Jakob. "Nielsen's Law of Internet Bandwidth," Nielsen Norman Group, 27 September 2019. 3. "Global Data Center Interconnect Solutions Market 2019- 2023— 12% CAGR Projection over the Next Five Years," Technavio, press release, Businesswire.com, 22 May 2019. 4. "Fiber Optic Connector Market Analysis By Product (SC Connector, LC Connector, FC Connector, ST Connector, MTP/MPO Connector), By Application, By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2018 – 2025," Market Research Report, Grand View Research, April 2017. The hyper-capacity connector, patch panels, and fanout cables are designed to meet the needs for higher capacity, lower costs, scalability/flexibility, environment/ operability, redundancy/reliability and excellent perfor- mance for the data center today and tomorrow. CONCLUSION The industry is faced with explosive growth due to both hyperscale and the cloud. Connected infrastructure com- prises 65 percent of total data center spend, expected cabling infrastructure market growth is 9 percent, annual- ized bandwidth growth rate is 50 percent, and the CAGR for physical connectors is greater than 12 percent. As optical fiber connectivity has become the leading media platform, current fiber connector technology faces significant challenges in meeting high-bandwidth and connected infrastructure growth demands. These challenges include data center connected infrastructure capacity, costs, performance, operability, flexibility, scalability, and longevity. However, the connector technology that is predominantly used to support today's extraordinary hyperscale and cloud growth was developed over 30 years ago! The connected compo- nents industry has long been overdue for a refresh and revitalization. Some manufacturers are rising to the occasion to help address these challenges by developing new connector technologies that are specifically designed to support high-density, low-loss connectivity, ease of installation, faster deployment, lower total cost of ownership, and greater flexibility for growth and scale. The connector revolution has begun! As optical fiber connectivity has become the leading media platform that supports the demands created by the massive growth of both hyperscale and cloud, old fiber connector technology developed over 30 years ago is causing significant challenges.