Back to the Future

November 23 marks the 25^th anniversary of the day the 10 millionth mobile device was sold. Given five billion people now have mobile connections; you may wonder how today’s milestones may be viewed in the future.

CLICK TO TWEET: This blog from CommScope takes you Back to the Future and describes the evolution of the network.

I need you to go with me…back to the future!

Borrowing from the Back to the Future film trilogy, we must understand history to prepare for the future. As the world embarks on a potential fourth Industrial Revolution, it is the 30 billion to 50 billion connected devices that will spur the unprecedented growth in bandwidth. Harnessing Internet of Things (IoT) technology requires not only investment, but a strategy and vision to transition when and where resources are needed. Here are trends we’re seeing today:

• Increased application workload: In addition to e-mail, web servers, file systems, and databases, the IT environment is now being overloaded with real-time web content, cloud, voice and video streaming, mobile applications, gaming, big data analytics, and IoT technology.
• Advanced data storage technology requires additional capacity: Storage technologies have changed from traditional direct attached storage to network attached storage and storage area networks, unified storage to tiered storage. Development of faster storage media technologies such as NVM-Express SSD has enabled newer storage models that are cloud-friendly, software defined with scale-out design, while offering higher throughput and faster inputs/outputs per second (IOPS).
• Hyper-convergence is gaining traction: A traditional infrastructure (non-converged) includes silos of application servers, storage and backup devices connected over the network. A converged infrastructure consolidates compute, virtualization, storage, and network to rack-level modularity, making it more hardware focused.
• Implementation of spine-and-leaf network architecture: Virtualization and cloud computing drive the need for convergence of storage and compute traffic that is predominantly east-west traffic, which demands low-latency and higher speeds.
• Development of network speeds and interfaces: We are quickly moving from 10Gb/s and 40Gb/s to 100Gb/s, 400Gb/s and beyond. The more data consumers and network users need, the more services they expect, the more critical speed becomes. This is a global phenomenon and one of the top challenges that data center managers will face.

A scalable network infrastructure is key to preparing for Gen Z demands

More than two thirds of Gen Z, consumers aged 13-22, will make purchases via social media directly and 60 percent will not use an app or a website if it’s too slow to load, according to ‘The Generation Z: Study of Tech Intimates,’ a survey which includes participants in eight major cities, including Bangalore, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Tokyo, amongst other cities outside of Asia Pacific. WhatsApp is the most commonly used app in Bangalore, according to the study.

A scalable network infrastructure is critical in supporting the current network while ensuring a smooth migration to prepare for higher capacity and bandwidth demands coming to this Always-On Generation.

Although we may not be able to travel in time, CommScope is committed to serving as a trusted partner who understands customers’ business needs and provides insight to future data centre ecosystems and technology trends. In fact, CommScope was recently recognized at the 2017 Network World Asia Readers’ Choice Awards for Structured/Physical Network Cabling and Intelligent Building Infrastructure.

I love working at a company that contributes to history in the making.