Welcome to the Netrality News Roundup!
We’ve selected key articles on the latest news, developments, innovations, and revelations in the colocation data center industry.
Don’t miss our bi-weekly news roundups to learn what’s going on with colocation, edge computing, and the brave new world of hybrid cloud, 5G, IoT, artificial intelligence, smart cities, virtual reality, and other technologies at the edge!
Edge Computing Products, Services to Skyrocket 14x Over a Decade
May 7, 2020
Matt Hamblen, Fierce Electronics
The global edge computing market is expected to grow 30% a year for the next decade, with North America taking up nearly half the total, according to analyst firm Fact.MR.
The total value of the market today is $3.2 billion and is projected to grow to $44 billion in 2030, representing an increase of 13.7 times, a Fact.MR spokesman told FierceElectronics. North America takes up 46% of the total market today largely because of prominent edge computing companies. Fact.MR includes among the major edge computing players some well-known names like Cisco, Digi, General Electric, HPE, Honeywell, IBM, Intel and Microsoft.
If the last decade was the decade of Cloud, the 20’s will be the decade of Edge. Cloud alone can no longer support the bandwidth, speed, and processing demands of new smart technologies and massive data generation. Instead of connecting to the cloud via centralized data centers, colocation data centers will be needed to provide direct on-ramps to multiple cloud providers, processing data as close to end-users as possible.
AI, Hybrid Cloud and 5G Dominate IBM Think Digital Keynote
May 5, 2020
Macy Bayern, TechRepublic
At IBM’s virtual Think conference, CEO Arvind Krishna also announced new services that facilitate digital transformation in business and society. This included the IBM Cloud Satellite, which extends cloud services to meet client needs.
“[IBM cloud satellite] can be delivered as a service on-premise or at the edge. Clients can increase their business agility by automating deployment and management of cloud-native services across all their computing environments, for both development and operations,” Krishna said. “What this means is that with IBM cloud satellite, our clients can run workloads where it makes the most sense,” he added.
Edge capabilities in digital technologies are no longer a nice-to-have. As Arvind Krishna understands, users need to run workloads not just in the cloud but where it makes the most sense, and in data-intensive industries, that is often the periphery of the internet close to users.
Pentagon Official: FCC Decision on 5G Threatens GPS, National Security
May 7, 2020
Marty Johnson, The Hill
Pentagon officials on Wednesday criticized the FCC’s recent decision to allow Virginia-based satellite communications company Ligado to deploy a nationwide mobile network, saying that it could have adverse effects on GPS signals that are integral military operations.
The Defense Department’s chief information officer Dana Deasy told the committee that Ligado’s proposed spectrum will have “unacceptable operational impacts and adversely affect the military potential of GPS.” The chairman of the committee, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), also chided the FCC for its decision.
While 5G has already been deployed in trial rollouts in a number of urban centers, such as Chicago, Kansas City and Houston, the widespread rollout and adoption will not come seamlessly. But no matter how long it takes or how much it costs, one thing is certain: 5G will require data centers that are rooted geographically close to the source of the data.
Virginia’s Prince William County Approves Data Center Tax Hike
Apr 29, 2020
Sharon Fisher, Data Center Knowledge
Prince William, VA officials have long sought to increase county revenue by raising the tax on data centers. After several failed attempts, commissioners of Prince William County in northern Virginia voted on April 28 to increase the tax rate on computer equipment – primarily affecting equipment used in data centers – from $1.25 to $1.35 per $100 of assessed value.
The vote came after county leaders shelved a previously planned real-estate tax hike – reportedly because they didn’t want to put extra burden on taxpayers facing the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The stronger role data centers play in a community’s economic base, the more tempted communities may be to draw revenue from them via new taxes. But that also could decentivize more companies from building data centers in high-tax areas. As 5G is rolled out in more and more communities across the country, this could get pretty contentious in some areas.
Hackers Exploiting SaltStack Vulnerability Hit Data Center
May 6, 2020
Maria Korolov, Data Center Knowledge
After infrastructure automation software vendor SaltStack released a patch for two critical vulnerabilities last Wednesday, hackers acted quickly to reverse engineer the exploit and attack vulnerable data centers.
The platform says it has over 2 million installs and claims Tinder, OkCupid, NASA, Square, DigitalOcean, Cloudflare, DuckDuckGo, and Mozilla among its customers. Most embarrassingly, DigiCert, a major digital security company and a leading issuer of digital certificates, had to take down a certificate transparency log server.
In the face of rapidly changing network infrastructure, traditional Network Access Control (NAC) solutions are no longer adequate for endpoint security. NAC solutions must, therefore, evolve to fully coordinate endpoint visibility, vulnerability assessment, access controls, and automated threat responses.
