Earlier this year, Vertiv, a British company that designs, manufactures, and provides technology services for data centers, network communication, and commercial and industrial environments, published the Data Center 2025: Closer to the Edge. This is a global survey that interviews 156 professionals in the data center industry, one of the most important in the market.

According to Vertiv, the future of data center business lies on edge or perimetric computing. This helps to understand the method for which the storage and use of data is done closer to where it is needed. This contributes to reducing the latency (temporary delays) and optimizing the bandwidth, while using cloud-based apps. The advantage of perimetric computing is that it is easy to visualize in activities such as video transmission, file handling or online gaming. Those would be the benefits. Now, the increasing number of apps moving in the cloud could turn shared bandwidth into an issue. For this reason, nowadays, perimetric computing presents itself as the next trend in the development of software and data storage.

The first conclusion in Vertiv’s report about data centers corroborates this perception. The profile on data center ecosystems will suffer a big transformation in the next few years. This results from the significant investment on perimetric computing in, practically, every sector of the industry. It is estimated that by 2026, 27% of the ecosystem’s computing will be done through this method.

34% of the interviewed professionals, affirmed to be in the middle of big internet perimetric deployments; 25% claimed to have implemented websites, especially designed with these characteristics; and 41% affirmed to have operated on inherited perimetric sites. The survey anticipated a 150% rise in central sites, as well as an increase in cloud activities by 2026. This is the same result shown in IT implemented resources in the public cloud, which will go from 19% to 25% increase. To sum up, for the next few years, the demand for this computer resource will escalate.

For the next five years, this change will give rise to a redevelopment on the scenario for data centers, which will move to a much faster perimetric IT by reinforcing the modern hybrid networks within company’s installations. Martin Olsen, frontier strategy and transformation’s worldwide vice president at Vertiv, states that the survey makes it clear that the future of computer science is related to speed and latency, and that the only way to satisfy this need is to create a new perimetric network for the internet.

In this respect, Javier Oliva, Regional Solutions Architect -SOLA Engineering- at OCP TECH thought that after its human capital, the main asset to a company is its data, which grows exponentially while demanding adequate connection capacities. He also added that the key is to present solutions like those we offer at OCP TECH, which include in an integral way the necessities that exist in a data center; from its design to its implementation and safely guaranteeing the customer’s information.

The survey also revealed the changing profile of the modern site’s border. 29% of those sites have between 5 and 20 racks (metal structure that supports computer systems and telecommunications networks) and 13% affirmed having more than 20. The more racks a site has, the greater the energy consumption. The survey also showed that 28% confirmed that the energy consumption of its structure stands between 21 and 200 kW, while 14% informed that it could exceed 200 kW. This also reveals that hiding individual racks inside the garage’s closets is a thing of the past.

However, the increase in energy consumption in frontier websites comes with an awakening about sustainability, which has become an important matter. 77% of the sites where the interviewees work, use or plan to use low consumption UPS systems, 40% intends to use renewable energies, 31% of refrigeration with an efficient use of the water, 29% of dynamic network support technologies and 19% refrigerants with low global warming potential (GWP).

While safety and availability are still the main priorities to those professionals of the industry who implemented perimetric sites, the work sheds light over some current operating and design practices that could end up reducing the capacity of the perimetric website to reach those two targets. The companies start prioritizing the growth of their perimetric computing, but this type of solutions may be complicated. There is a lot more than software, hardware, orchestration, and management: the solutions to frontier internet cannot be applied, equally, to any business and need to be configurable and adaptable to different environments.