Vertiv Data Centre Survey Sees Edge Sites Tripling by 2025
Updated forecast projects growth at edge
and precipitous talent drain
Sydney [July 10, 2019] – Five years ago, Vertiv led a global, industry-wide examination of the data centre of the future. Data Centre 2025: Exploring the Possibilities, stretched the imaginations of more than 800 industry professionals and introduced a collaborative vision for the next-generation data centre. Vertiv has released a mid-point update – Data Centre 2025: Closer to the Edge – and it reveals fundamental shifts in the industry that barely registered in the forecasts from five short years ago.
The migration to the edge is changing the way today’s industry leaders think about the data centre. They are grappling with a broad data centre ecosystem comprised of many types of facilities and relying increasingly on the edge of the network. Of participants who have edge sites today or expect to have edge sites in 2025, more than half (53%) expect the number of edge sites they support to grow by at least 100% with 20% expecting a 400% or more increase. Collectively, survey participants expect their total number of edge computing sites will grow 226% between now and 2025.
During the original 2014 research, the edge was acknowledged as a growing trend but merited just four mentions in the 19-page report. The industry’s attention at that point was focused firmly on hybrid architectures leveraging enterprise, cloud and colocation resources. Even in an industry that routinely moves and changes at light speed, the growth of the edge and the dramatic impact it will have on the data centre is staggering.
“In just five short years, we have seen the emergence of an entirely new segment of the ecosystem, driven by the need to locate computing closer to the user,” said Rob Johnson, Vertiv CEO. “This new distributed network is reliant on a mission-critical edge that has fundamentally changed the way we think about the data centre.”
"The results of the survey are reflective of what we are seeing and hearing from our customers on the ground here in Asia. We are seeing an intelligence continuum from the cloud to the edge – meaning – a seamless integration of intelligent devices complementing growing compute power. This requires a significant investment in edge infrastructure that's fully flexible and resilient to be able to deliver real time compute and meet customers' expectations," said Anand Sanghi, president of Asia and India at Vertiv.
More
than 800 data centre professionals participated in the
survey. Among the other notable results:
• Participants
aren’t as bullish on the prospects for solar and wind
power in the data centre as they were in 2014. Then, they
projected about 34% of data centre power would come from
those sources by 2025. Now, the expectation is 21% – still
optimistic, but mindful of the ambitious
timeline.
• Globally, 16% of participants expect to be
retired by 2025, exacerbating an already problematic talent
shortage. In the U.S., that number is an alarming
33%.
“Shifting workloads to the cloud has helped
mitigate the impact of labour challenges in the short term,
but as hybrid IT and edge computing continue to grow the
skills gap is becoming a more serious issue,” said Robert
Linsdell, managing director for Vertiv in Australia and New
Zealand. “These changes require new skills that may not
exist in the legacy workforce and this could hamper the
ability of some IT organisations to support their businesses
as they continue to evolve.”
# # #
Complete
survey results are available in the report, Data Centre 2025: Closer to the Edge.
The original report and additional analysis of the results
are available at Vertiv.com.
ends