Reflective of the exponential growth of data is the 200% increase from 2016 of connected IoT devices that are predicted to become active this year. As IoT devices enter more industries such as agriculture, healthcare, IT and critical services, it’s imperative for businesses to harness these technologies to make more informed data decisions. The challenge though is how it is used and analysed for real-time decision making.

The answer to this for many is connection to the digital edge, but this raises the question of the role that edge computing and IoT plays in the data centre and colocation space. With this in mind, there are a number of aspects for you to consider:

The uptake of IoT – IoT has been heavily verticalised in recent years and centered around healthcare, retail and manufacturing. It is however now starting to benefit other sectors such as health and safety initiatives, including track-and-trace and smart building technology.

The increasing maturity of 5G – While 5G brings great promise as its rollout across the UK continues, there is still not widespread coverage to fully support this advancement.

The adoption of data analytics – In much the same way as IoT, data analytics represents tremendous potential. However, mirroring the uptake and optimisation of IoT, the opportunity around analytics is still largely limited to verticalised applications

The viability of regional colocation for the edge – Mobilising location-specific edge instances and the ability to spin-up the required communications hinges on strategically placed regional data centre locations and mitigating the cost and performance restrictions of public cloud.

The expansion of customer data lakes – The maturation of customer data lakes curated outside of cloud boundaries with the potential to support edge applications before wider consolidated cloud publishing.

The location of edge requirements – Edge positioning, both in terms of its physical location and architecture, has a high economic weighting in this model.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE DATA CENTRE AND THE EDGE
The role that edge computing plays in data centre operations closely depends on the above elements in order to capture, transfer, process, store and manage data. As it stands in the industry, interaction between many of these factors is taking place, but consistent integration between them is needed to establish a business case for an edge instance for IoT.

When analysing the location of edge requirements, it's increasingly the case that the edge could be anything from a plane to a temporary site. For data centre providers, it's imperative to think beyond infrastructure change and deploy facilities closer to the customer instance, enabling business users to benefit from lower latency.

While extension of remote services is likely with managed service providers, the economics of location, latency and capacity are vital for data centre providers. In many cases, it is hoped that the infrastructure footprint of the colocation provider will be sufficient, but this doesn't form the foundation of a sustainable edge colocation business model. This requires an effective, responsive and economic mobilisation of communications, which will be time-bound in many instances.

LOOKING FORWARD
Without doubt, the expansion of IoT and edge devices will continue to have an impact on businesses moving forward. The role that it plays in the data centre and colocation market however is defined largely on the interplay between a number of elements that will shape the industry moving forward. From gradual adoption of 5G technologies to changing colocation models, the coming years will dictate whether IoT and resulting data lakes will truly transform the data centre as we know it. NC