Rittal has identified escalating data volumes, a secure European cloud (data sovereignty), the rapid modernisation of data centres and rising energy consumption as the key IT/data centre trends for 2020. Two examples are the use of OCP (Open Compute Project) technology and heat recovery, both of which offer solutions to current challenges.
By 2025, humans and machines could already be generating 175 zettabytes of data, according to forecasts by market research company IDC (International Data Corporation). Stored on conventional DVDs, this would equate to 23 stacks of discs reaching to the moon. The annual 27 percent growth in data also places escalating demands on the IT structure.
Because few companies can afford to increase their own data storage by just under one-third each year, IT managers are making growing use of IT services in the cloud. Be it storage or computing, the cloud trend is now well-established in Germany. A survey published in summer 2019 by the ITC industry association Bitkom and KPMG found that three out of four companies are already using cloud solutions.
However, anyone using cloud solutions from third-party providers has relinquished some degree of control over their company data. For example the US Cloud Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data) allows US authorities to access data stored in the cloud, even if local legislation at the data storage location prohibits this.
“In future, economic success will be sustainable if it can keep pace with complete digitalization and integration. Companies will increasingly seek to maximise the value of their data, in real-time, for example in a production environment,” predicts Dr. Karl-Ulrich Köhler, CEO of Rittal International. Data sovereignty will become a critical success factor for global competitiveness,” adds Dr. Köhler.
Trend #1: Data sovereignty
Autonomous data handling will become a key competitive factor for companies. This is particularly relevant in sectors where data privacy is a priority, and the analysis of such data is decisive to business success, such as healthcare, mobility, banking and the manufacturing industry. Companies must decide how to process their data securely and efficiently, and whether to modernise their own data centre, invest in edge infrastructures, or make use of the cloud.
The Gaia-X European digital project, a major initiative by the Federal Ministry for Economics and Energy (BMWi), is due to launch in 2020. The aim is to develop a European cloud for the secure digitalization and interconnection of industry and as the basis for the use of new AI (artificial intelligence) applications. The “International Data Spaces” initiative, a virtual data room where companies can exchange data securely, was created by Fraunhofer Gesellschaft against this backdrop. Compatibility between your own solution and established (cloud) platforms (interoperability) is likewise assured.
This means that geographically distributed smaller data centres with open cloud stacks could create a new class of industrial applications whereby initial data analyses are performed directly at the point of data origination, with the cloud being used for downstream analyses. One such solution is ONCITE. The turnkey (plug & produce) edge cloud data centre is designed to store and process data directly where it originates, so that companies retain data sovereignty throughout the entire supply chain with interconnectivity.
Trend #2: Standardisation in the data centre with OCP
It is more crucial than ever for companies to act quickly to modernise their existing data centres as processed data volumes continue to rise. The key requirements for upgrading include a standardised technology, cost-efficient operation and good scalability of the infrastructure. OCP (Open Compute Project) technology with central DC distribution in the IT rack offers an attractive alternative for a growing number of CIOs, thanks to the new cost optimisation potential offered by DC components. Energy to all IT components is supplied centrally with n+1 power packs per rack. This achieves efficient cooling with fewer power packs. At the same time, the high level of standardisation among OCP components simplifies maintenance and spare parts management. The average efficiency gain is around five percent of the total electricity.
Rittal expects OCP to become further established as an integrated system platform in the data centre during the course of 2020. New OCP products for rack cooling, power supply and monitoring will allow rapid upgrades with DC components. Furthermore, new products will support the conventional concept of a central emergency power supply guaranteed by a central UPS. It will no longer be necessary to back up each OCP rack with a lithium ion battery-based UPS. This significantly reduces the fire load in the OCP data centre.
Trend #3: Heat recovery and direct CPU cooling
Data centres emit large quantities of energy to the environment in the form of waste heat. As the packaging density inside the data centre grows, so too do the quantities of heat generated, which could potentially be used for other purposes. Until now, however, the use of waste heat has been too expensive, for example because potential clients tend not to be located in the immediate vicinity of the site. Furthermore, a waste heat temperature of 40°C such as that generated by air-based IT cooling systems is far too low to be used cost-effectively.
Particularly in the area of high-performance computing (HPC), IT racks generate high thermal loads, often in excess of 50 kW. For HPC, direct processor cooling with water is far more efficient than air cooling, and offers return temperatures of between 60 and 65 degrees. At these temperatures, for example, the use of waste heat is viable to warm process water or infeed into a district heating network via heat pumps. However, CIOs should note that even with direct CPU water cooling, only around 80% of the waste heat can be removed from an IT rack. IT cooling for the rack is still required for the remaining 20%.
At the German Government’s Digital Summit 2019, the working party discussed the issue of thermal recovery and established that much still needs to be done. With this in mind, Rittal anticipates that in 2020, a significantly greater number of CIOs will be concerned with how previously unused waste heat from the data centre can be cost-effectively exploited.
Trend #4: Integration of multi-cloud environments
Companies need the reassurance of knowing that they can operate their cloud applications on common platforms and in any country. This calls for a multi-cloud strategy. From the management’s viewpoint, this is a strategic decision based on the realisation that their own organisation will evolve into a fully digitalised company.
An excellent user experience, for example, is guaranteed by a minimal delay with corresponding availability zones on site. In other words, companies select one or more availability zones worldwide for their services depending on the specific business requirements. Compliance with strict data privacy regulations is ensured via a specialised local provider in the target market. An open-provider multi-cloud strategy achieves precisely that: the functional density and scalability of hyperscalers expediently combined with the data privacy of local and specialist providers like Innovo Cloud. At the push of a button, on a dashboard, with one point of contact, one invoice, and at the precise second that a business decision is taken.
Multi-cloud strategies are poised to become one of the megatrends of the next few years. Industry will take further digitalization steps and use cloud-native technologies – applications designed and developed for the cloud computing architecture – to further boost the speeds of their in-house continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) pipelines. Automation of the integration and delivery processes will facilitate the fast, reliable, reproducible supply of software (“deployments”).