CommScope: AI, Private Cloud and Fibre to define 2021

No one disputes the fact that 2021 will be a transformational year for the data centre, networking and telecom industries. As the pandemic rages on, enterprises around the world are accelerating digital transformations and increasing their reliance on the infrastructure that supports it. 

This week, we touch base with Alastair Waite, William O’Connell, and Lewis White from US network infrastructure provider CommScope, who share their insights and predictions for the technologies set to enable the ongoing global digital transformation of the digital infrastructure space. 

AI Adoption will Increase

“Incorporation of AI applications has been an ongoing trend for data centres, and we see no sign of this slowing down,” says Alastair Waite, who works on the Data Centre Market Development team at CommScope. 

“Across data centres, AI is being used to drive safety and security applications like automatic temperature checks, touchless authorisation and traffic monitoring, for example. 

“AI/ML data is typically housed in very large data lakes and specialised servers equipped with accelerators are ideally suited to processing AI/ML tasks. Data centre networks are ramping up bandwidth to feed these systems with very large data pipes, enabling the cost-effective development of AI tools.”

Private Cloud Acceleration

“We’ve recently observed an accelerated adoption of private cloud infrastructure. Despite the recent view that everything would ultimately move to the public cloud, companies that maintain large data centres are finding private clouds less expensive than public clouds,” comments William O’Connell, Cloud Sales Manager at CommScope. 

“What’s more, many companies have realised that they need to keep financial, healthcare and other sensitive information in private clouds, and that some applications simply can’t be converted to the public cloud.” 

The Drive to Single-Mode Fibre

Lastly, Lewis White, VP of Enterprise Infrastructure at CommScope, notes that, “To facilitate the growth of data centre capacity and the continuous improvement in DC efficiency, fibre networks are shifting the bandwidth of network optics up. 

“This will create a need for more efficient network switching elements and drive the use of ‘fibre to the server’ as previous generations of copper cabling reach speed and distance limitations.”