Grace Ashiru
Telecommunications and data center providers globally, and particularly in Africa, are grappling with mounting challenges in meeting the demands driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and the swiftly evolving technology landscape. These shifts are significantly impacting their infrastructure and services.
Jon Abbott, Sales Director for Strategic Telecom Clients in EMEA at Vertiv, a global leader in critical digital infrastructure and continuity solutions, recently highlighted these issues while speaking to Kenyan leaders in the local telecom, tower, and colocation sectors in Nairobi. Abbott shared valuable insights into the operational and technological transformations expected to reshape the entire communications networks landscape by 2030.
The 2023 Digital Quality of Life Index, which examines digital wellbeing for 92 percent of the global population, places Kenya 76th overall out of 121 countries. Within Africa, Kenya ranks 3rd out of 25 countries across various pillars affecting digital quality of life. However, the country’s ranking falls to 82nd globally in terms of AI readiness.
“The challenge for Kenya is that AI adoption is already transforming the IT stack and our IT infrastructures. This necessitates the development of accelerated architectures to meet the demands of AI workloads,” Abbott stated.
He highlighted that the necessary network developments will involve operational adjustments that consumers won’t notice. This will likely entail changes in network ownership and increased service costs, driven largely by the rising energy consumption demands as intelligent connectivity expands.
“This situation will put a greater emphasis on efficiency, and more attention will need to be directed towards sustainability and emission reduction,” Abbott elaborated.
Simultaneously, we can expect significant technological advancements, including a shift towards edge computing, which will drive major tech collaborations and increased standardization across both physical and logical infrastructures – a complex endeavor. Additionally, we can foresee a rise in open-source groups and commoditized hardware, the integration of data processing capabilities into the network fabric, and the emergence of new ecosystems featuring more private networks.
“The Internet of Things (IoT) also holds the potential to unlock insights and efficiencies across all sectors. The evolution of IoT will involve dispersing processing capabilities throughout the landscape, breaking down facilities into smaller, localized units,” he continued.
According to Abbott, the modern data center is here to stay. However, we will see an expansion of smaller “edge” data centers alongside the larger ones. These smaller centers will share the same essential physical needs as their bigger counterparts: they must be continuously operational, maintain optimal temperatures to avoid overheating, and run with maximum efficiency and security.
Abbott emphasized that meeting these requirements presents significant challenges, particularly regarding energy provision. This is especially crucial in light of energy transitions and the need to adhere to sustainability targets aimed at reducing global emissions by 2030.
Other challenges to address include accommodating the anticipated exponential growth in rack density, managing constraints on skills availability, balancing the trade-offs between new builds and retrofits, dealing with power grid limitations, and the increasing demand for short turnaround times and quick-to-deploy, repeatable designs.
“The bottom line is that AI will pose a significant challenge for network providers, with data consumption and creation accelerating across all sectors and data processing saturating the facility landscape. While this scenario could be intimidating for providers, having the right partner by your side – one that can assist with power and thermal management, as well as integrated rack solutions – will greatly ease your deployment journey. Vertiv is well positioned to be that partner,” Abbott concluded.
