Forecasts show how the edge will increase while the level of skills required will decrease.
Five years ago, Vertiv conducted a global industry analysis on the data centers of the future. Data Center 2025: Exploring the Possibilities has expanded the imagery of over 800 industry professionals by introducing a collaborative vision of the next generation data center. Today, having reached the middle of this path, Vertiv has decided to conduct a new analysis - Data Center 2025: Closer to the Edge - revealing fundamental changes in the sector that until five years ago were not in the least foreseen.
The migration to the edge is changing the way industry leaders think about the data center today. In fact, they find themselves dealing with a large ecosystem including many types of structures and increasingly based on the edge of the network. Of participants who already have edge sites or expect to have them by 2025, more than half (53%) expect the number of sites they support to grow by at least 100%, with 20% expecting an increase of 400% or more. On average, survey participants predicted the total number of their edge computing sites would grow by 226 percent by 2025.
During the first research, conducted in 2014, the edge was recognized as a growing trend but obtained only four citations in a 19-page report. At the time, the industry's focus was on hybrid architectures capable of leveraging corporate resources, cloud and colocation. Even in an industry evolving at the speed of light, the growth of the edge and the enormous impact it will have on the data center is staggering.
“In just five years, we have seen an entirely new segment of the ecosystem emerge, driven by the need to bring computing closer to the user,” said Rob Johnson, CEO of Vertiv. “This new distributed network is based on the mission critical edge, which has completely changed the way we think about the data center.”
“Predicting technological changes two years from now or more may be difficult, but this research aligns with the vision of a constantly changing and incredibly dynamic market,” said Giordano Albertazzi, Vertiv president for Europe, Middle East and Africa. "In particular, the growth estimates of edge computing are consistent with the expected increase in AI, IoT and other applications dependent on latency and bandwidth. The challenge, linked above all to the shortage of personnel in the data center, will be to manage all these new infrastructures effectively and efficiently. Remote management of data centers and lights-out approaches will play an increasingly important role".
Over 800 data center professionals participated in the survey. Among the notable results:
- Participants are no longer as convinced about the prospects for solar and wind energy applied to the data center as they were in 2014. If they previously thought that by 2025 34% of the energy needed would be obtained from these sources, today the 'expectation is 21%, still an optimistic value, but more cautious on the ambitious timeline.
– Overall, 16% of participants expect to retire by 2025, exacerbating the already problematic situation of the shortage of expert resources. In the United States, the figure is more alarming: we are talking about 33%.
For full survey results, see the report Data Center 2025: Closer to the Edge The original report and additional analysis of results are available at Vertiv.it.
