The whole data center ecosystem, North and South of the rack, will connect at DatacenterDynamics at CeBIT in Hall 12, where the infrastructure requirements of the digital economy will be debated and defined.

A key focus in 2016 revolves around the proliferation of the Internet of Things and how the underlying infrastructure can support the advancement of IoT with edge computing.

“The need to serve locally has become critical in tackling the IoT tsunami. The concept of the edge is to move nodes closer to the end user via disaggregated infrastructures. The decentralised data center has brought forward edge and micro data centers in support of these edge architectures.” says George Rockett, CEO & Co-Founder of DatacenterDynamics.

Whilst 2015 has been largely hailed as the year of the cloud, 2016 could very much be the year of the edge, creating opportunities for a wide range of segments, including CDNs, network and data center operators and carriers, who are looking to deliver the seemingly endless demand for broadband wireless capacity for data intense content.

Edge
DCD at CeBIT 2016

The rise of content delivery networks

Content Delivery Networks, which are responsible for moving content over the internet, have been storing content on servers in many different places, shifting it closer to the end users. With the proliferation of IoT, CDNs are pushing for more data center space everywhere. Whilst well-known CDNs such as Akamai, Limelight and Level 3 have been largely dominating the CDN space, Google, Microsoft and AWS are following suit and building their own CDNs.

“CDNs and internet companies need places to locate their caching servers closer to the end-user. This is ultimately driving demand for more data centers in underserved locations to transmit, collect and store data in order to provide quicker processing and decision-making capabilities” says Armin Graefe, Global IT and infrastructure - Data center systems operations at Adidas Group, who will be speaking at DCD at CeBIT. “Data center and network locations are today dictated by the end-users, who demand a seamless experience whether it is in London, Hannover or Istanbul”.

The industry is increasingly reassessing the distribution of infrastructure across the stack. The likes of Schneider Electric and Rittal have built out micro data centers for edge computing applications, whilst the newly formed Intel and HP alliance is set to launch purpose-built IoT systems tackling edge networking. Whilst the edge will undoubtedly become a vital part in the advancement of IoT, the technology requirements however are complex, and current solutions are still in the early stages.

“Everyone is connecting back to the data center and the core, which is creating data storage and connectivity challenges. The edge is still in its infancy and a lot of work needs to be done for the industry to collectively come up with a solution. DCD at CeBIT is a unique place for the entire ecosystem to come together and debate the best way forward in unlocking the full potential of the edge” adds Rockett.

Register today! More information on the conference programme and the expo can be found online and more detailed requests for information can be directed to Merima Dzanic.