Call the Right Play with Your Data Center Strategy
U.S. Location Guide:
Think about all of the computing and network resources it takes to host professional sports in large stadiums and stream them live to multiple audiences simultaneously. According to Forbes, the record-breaking
172 million Super Bowl LIV viewers illustrate the exponential growth and demands on technology and data access.
The playbook for data center strategy is changing.
It’s the same challenge all businesses face:
Data-intensive applications, Internet of Things (IoT) communications and artificial intelligence-infused computing can cause service problems for businesses with outdated data center strategies.
Smart businesses are revamping their data center strategies to include locations that are growing fast and have business-friendly incentives. These locations attract professional sports teams for the same reasons.
Traditional Data Center Hubs
San Francisco/
San Jose
Chicago
New York/
Northern New Jersey
Northern Virginia/ Washington, D.C
With the volume and density of data flowing among countless endpoints today, businesses can no longer meet high-demand service level agreements (SLAs) with a strategy of serving the entire country from one or two cities.
Growing Data CenterS
portland
Simply put, data centers today need to be geographically close to customers to achieve low latency with high-performance applications.
las vegas
denver
minneapolis
philadelphia
nashville
dallas
atlanta
1
Businesses traditionally chose tech hotspots for data centers based on the availability of fiber optic networks and other related resources. This used to make sense under yesterday’s business and consumer technology models, but innovation has disrupted this strategy.
Innovation Puts the Spotlight on Reducing Data Hops
Serving Users on the Edge
• Smart devices and the IoT are driving an edge
computing market that is projected to reach
$14.8 billion by 2025, a compound annual growth
rate of 35%.
• More than 21.5 billion IoT devices are now in use.
• Global spending on smart cities initiatives will
total nearly $124 billion in 2020, with 4.3 billion
5G subscriptions forecasted for 2024.
• 74% of households subscribe to streaming services.
Data is moving back and forth to more people and places. Meeting modern SLAs is about one thing: reducing data hops by locating data centers close to fast-growing population centers.
Systems on the edge—particularly IoT components—can act and react faster. Ultimately, that’s a game changer. When a business’ value proposition relies on the deployment of thousands of video cameras, or real-time image or speech recognition, milliseconds matter.
Milliseconds Matter for System and App Performance
A delay of 10 milliseconds in an email is unnoticeable, but the same lag in a connected camera or a sensor in a robotic device could cripple performance.
5G will introduce 10x or greater reduction in latency as it comes online.
Sub-5-millisecond latency is required for many applications. Unfortunately, the farther the data has to travel to reach a cloud computer, the longer it takes to compute and complete the task.
2
3
4
5
6
Application requirements
What factors into the equation? Key issues to consider include:
Proximity isn’t the only element in a successful data center strategy. It’s also essential to work with a provider that understands today’s requirements and has the locations, infrastructure and services to support business needs today and in the future.
Choose the Right Type of Provider
Sustainable power mix
Population density and usage patterns
Tax incentives, power costs and lease terms
Environmental risk factors such as earthquakes, hurricanes and tornadoes
Demographics, including workforce and market demographics
The reality is that you don’t know what technology requirements you’ll need in five years—so plan for uncertainty.
Modern businesses need greater flexibility and lower latency across their operations, from the back office and supply chain to the front lines of consumer interaction. Moving closer to growing population centers and choosing the right data center provider means applications and systems are more responsive—and data is available when and where it’s needed, at the precise moment it’s required.
Make no mistake, a conventional data center model isn’t designed for digital business and the IoT. It’s essential to have a provider that understands workload trends, density and changing computing requirements that doing business on the edge introduces. Partner with Flexential to call the right play with your data center strategy and position yourself for a win.
A Winning Strategy
888-552-3539
1 Forbes. Super Bowl LIV to Push Technological Boundaries Further Than Ever Before as Miami Prepares for Showpiece Event, January 2020.
2 Market Research Engine. Edge Computing Market - Global Forecast
2020-2025, January 2020.
3 Statistica. Edge Computing - Statistics & Facts, April 2020.
4 IDC. New IDC Spending Guide Forecasts $124 Billion Will Be Spent on
Smart Cities Initiatives in 2020, February 2020.
5 Statistica. Edge Computing - Statistics & Facts, April 2020.
6 Statistica. 74% Of U.S. Homes Have A Video Streaming Service,
August 2019.
