The Internet of Things (IoT) is transforming how companies and consumers go about their days around the world. The technology that underlies this whole segment is evolving quickly, whether it’s the rapid rise of the Amazon Echo and voice assistants upending the consumer space, or growth of AI-powered analytics platforms for the enterprise market. Given all these new points of networked connection, our “old” Internet has transformed into the Internet of things (IoT). The net result for data centers? Endless opportunity, an increased workload and new security concerns.
Projected IoT Growth
The Internet of Things (IoT) has already changed how we live and work as more devices across the globe become interconnected.
Business Insider Intelligence forecasts that there will be more than 64 billion IoT devices installed around the world by 2026, with companies and consumers spending nearly $15 trillion on IoT devices, solutions, and supporting systems.
And as IoT expands, it will have a particularly profound effect on businesses. Across industries, the IoT will create numerous opportunities in the coming years as we head into an increasingly connected world.
Data Center Implications
Some data center issues as the scale of IoT device usage grows are readily apparent: more powerful hardware, increased bandwidth, and support personnel with up-to-date skill sets. One of the most pressing concerns will be the security of the myriad endpoint devices out of the reach of data center security protocols. In this article, we focus on five areas of impact.
Optimizing storage
As more data is generated there will be a corresponding growth in demand for storage space. Not only will this lead to more data centers being built but will also lead to innovative ways for optimizing storage capacity with better servers and newer compression technologies.
Inbound data flow and network requirements
As of now, data center architecture is designed to support large amounts of data flowing out to enterprises. Increase in IoT traffic will reverse this trend and see huge amounts of data, comprising a vast number of smaller data packets generated by individual devices, coming into the data centers on a regular basis. This will require data center owners to increase their inbound data bandwidth.
Security and data privacy
With the number of connected devices increasing, the networks have become more vulnerable to cyber attacks. The security landscape must be designed to deal with this ever-growing range of cyber threats. Also as more and more of our personal data is digitized and stored, data centers will need to ensure the highest level of data privacy.
Data Center locations
Currently, data centers drive cost efficiencies by building large, single location data centers. With the increase in IoT data it will not be viable to transfer all this data to a centralized location. Data center owners will have to build localized data centers to handle and process the local data traffic.
Cost efficiencies
It is virtually impossible to store all the IoT data generated, data center providers will have to look for more efficient ways to sort this data in real time to identify valuable data that must be stored and processed further. This will consume costly network bandwidth and processing power and further decrease the cost efficiencies currently enjoyed by data center companies.
The rate of transformation in data center planning, implementation, and management is only increasing. Contact Silverback Data Center Solutions to learn how to change without being a victim of change.
