The amount of data generated and stored by businesses has grown exponentially. 

Data centers play a key role in the technology infrastructure, ensuring secure storage and the necessary connectivity to support all online services. For this and other reasons, they became even more relevant during the pandemic, as digitization turned into a necessity for many organizations. 

Growing data storage

The amount of data generated by companies has increased significantly over the last few years. With the age of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, more and more information is collected, processed and stored. 

This data blast has brought storage and management challenges in on-premises infrastructures. Data centers are an efficient solution to deal with this demand, offering scalable data storage and processing capacity. 

Fundamentals of Data Centers

Data centers are data processing and storage centers that provide the physical infrastructure needed to support online services. They consist of servers, networks, cooling systems and advanced security. 

Servers are responsible for processing information and storing it, while networks ensure connectivity between devices. Cooling systems are essential to maintain the proper temperature in data centers, preventing equipment from overheating and ensuring proper operation. 

Having said that, data centers are based on three pillars, namely:

• Confidentiality ˗ all information must be protected according to the secrecy degree of their content, limiting access only to authorized individuals;
• Integrity – all data must be kept in the same condition made available by their owner, protecting it against undue, intentional or accidental changes;
• Availability- all information generated must be available to users at the time it is requested, for any purpose.

Digital transformation and the Pandemic:

The pandemic brought significant changes to the business world, accelerating digital transformation. Due to Social distancing and mobility restrictions, many companies needed to migrate to the digital environment, adopting online services and remote work. 

In this context, data centers became essential to ensure business continuity and digital services provision.  They can allow companies to quickly adapt to changing demands and user needs. 

Security and connectivity:

Data security is an ongoing concern for businesses. Data centers have advanced protection and monitoring systems in place to ensure confidentiality, integrity and availability of stored information, protecting them against cyber threats and unauthorized access. 

Furthermore, data centers ensure reliable and fast connectivity, enabling an efficient online service access. This is essential to the satisfaction and good experience of users, as well as for the effectiveness of company operations. 

With the ever-increasing amount of data and the need for online services, data centers have become the backbone of modern digital infrastructure. In addition to providing secure, reliable storage, they deliver the connectivity required to support enterprises’ digital transformation. 

In an increasingly connected world, recognizing the strategic importance of data centers is essential to ensure the success and competitiveness of organizations. 

Faced with this scenario of exponential data growth and demand for online services, having a reliable partner with an advanced offer of data centers solutions is of the essence. And this is where Cirion can be your strategic partner. Count on us for a robust and secure infrastructure for data storage and processing.

Author: 
Elton Tiepolo
Business Development Manager – Data Center and Cloud 

Background in several IT projects throughout his career, he holds an MBA in Telecommunications from Ibmec and an MBA in Big Data & Analytics from FGV.

As people discuss on ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) matters and consumers pay more attention to sustainability issues, there is a growing need for companies to implement actions in this regard.

On the other hand, the significant increase in the amount of data produced worldwide on a daily basis, is constantly driving the demand for data centers. However, these structures must not remain stuck in the past. Demand for sustainable data centers is expected to grow more than 14% by 2032[i], as a result of long-term profitable investment thinking, improved ROI and public pressure for sustainability.

Development and use of sustainable data centers then became a main issue for companies, in order to have operations and use of their resources optimized, aligned with a wave of environmental, political and economic challenges.

Sustainable Data Center and their low carbon footprint

Data centers are used by organizations and cloud service providers to store an unlimited amount of data. Considering the amount of computing equipment in a same room, high demand for energy is imaginable, as well as the demand for water, for adequate cooling.

A sustainable data center has in turn a structure designed to minimize use of these and other resources, with eco-friendly technologies.  The choice of clean and renewable energy sources, such as solar, hydroelectric and wind, are some of the measures implemented in addition to low-consumption cooling systems and low-carbon emission control in operations.

In fact, carbon neutrality is a hot topic at the time of designing and implementing new data centers, aimed at preserving the environment and biodiversity, which is also reflected in the proper disposal of unfit-for-use equipment.

One metric for each point of care

In terms of priorities to measure a sustainable data center efficiency, implementing sustainability objectives is imperative and useful for companies. Measuring social and environmental impact of operations allows companies to develop results-oriented plans, more aligned with their purpose.

Thus, ESG-related business actions and decisions are currently guided by the following indicators:

• Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE);
• Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE);
• Space Usage Effectiveness (SUE);
• Grid Usage Effectiveness (GUE);
• Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE).

These indicators allow optimization of all resources, which can be monitored and improved over time, creating savings and controlling the impact of actions.

Although these indicators are the result of theoretical evaluation of what makes sense to measure, in practice only the PUE has been used on a large scale. And this so because we are dealing with complex measurements, which do not provide much additional information to the current scenario. As ESG actions advance across the segment, other measures should begin to appear more frequently.

Invest now to reap the benefits later

Although sustainable data centers call for greater investment in their construction and implementation, their return is not only environmental overall –their total cost of ownership (TCO) is lower, and their management is more cost-effective.

This is because their facilities are capable of maintaining a high level of operations over time, further assisted by predictive maintenances increasingly available in the market. Additionally, government incentives for building environmentally friendly data centers and the rising cost of energy, the sooner migration to the sustainable model is made, the better.

At Cirion, for example, this concern is followed to the letter. Ultimately, we continue working to decarbonize our operations in Latin America, aiming to achieve zero emissions by 2050. To accomplish this, we are using data centers with electrical energy supplies from renewable sources, as well as the latest hardware technologies to ensure low latency and data flow security when operating at higher temperatures. Therefore, they require lower cooling spending.

So, when looking for a partner who understands the IT challenges of our region and offers an infrastructure that is not only secure but more sustainable, count on Cirion.

[i] According to Persistence Market Research.

Author:
Rodrigo Oliveira
Business Director – Data Center, Cloud & Security
Cirion, Brazil

With over 30 years of experience at the Data Center and Telcos segment, Rodrigo provides Cirion’s customers with the necessary guidance to leverage technology for business expansion. He worked for several multinational companies in Brazil and contributed to build Diveo’s operation in the country.  He was as well President of UOL Diveo’s unit in Colombia, while performing the affiliate sale to Riverwood/Synapsis. He also directed Matrix Datacenter.

We are living on the Era of streaming and digital entertainment. According to Data Market Forecast report, the main online video content providers in Latin America will invoice US$851MM by 2025, twice as much the amount collected 5 years ago.  Furthermore, Statista, the statistic portal for market data, points out that the gaming market in the region could exceed the barrier of US$3.6 Billion by year end. 

Behind this whole phenomenon there’s an underlying primary challenge for data centers – how to address high connectivity requests posed by this huge number of users trying to access these resources, which in turn call for very high bandwidth and efficiency levels.  

Data traffic growth related to digital entertainment is exponential, while users are increasingly demanding.  Unlike what happened with free-to-air TV -barely a few years ago-, when someone would spend a big deal of time moving antennas or hitting the device to get a good signal, digital entertainment consumers today want top image quality (usually 4K) and true real-time broadcast, without delays or pixels.  From the industry business standpoint, a very high, almost absolute availability is required – any signal outage could mean losing customers.  

To tackle all these challenges, data centers need to be more resilient than ever before.  Flexible and scalable to grow on demand, and capable to include new technologies to achieve these goals.  Redundant to ensure seamless service, with high speed connectivity and great bandwidth to support a volume that will not stop growing, and with self-service proposals to allow digital entertainment industry businesses accompany business movements without delays, and vendor-agnostic. 

Content distribution networks

Content Distribution Networks (CDN, for its acronym in English) are particularly positioned as a perfect solution — edge structure and caching storage systems to take data processing where content is consumed to significantly decrease latency and ensure an excellent user experience, even under specific situations such as a large scale, live event broadcast (concert, relevant sport final). 

They bring in technologies, such as load balancer, to dynamically commute between different networks based on where demand takes place or on the location of the highest performance network, optimized routing or end-to-end security (industry suffers both with cyberattacks that jeopardize service continuity, and piracy-related vulnerabilities of the broadcasted content itself). 

Another significant advance is given by software-defined networks.  They simplify network management and configuration – all workloads, across the full range of connectivity types, can be viewed, coordinated, and controlled through a centralized, automated, real-time platform, including routing, traffic thresholds, security, and access policies. 

While all this happens deep down the network, on the surface the miracle occurs: users watch what they want to, when they want to, on the device of their choice and with the highest quality.

Author:

Gabriel del Campo
VP Data Center, Cloud & Security
Cirion Technologies

The benefits delivered by hybrid cloud to businesses are so tangible that adoption levels are reaching an extraordinary extent.   Indeed, the fact that organizations have maximum flexibility to keep up with business growth, agility to assimilate high-speed changes, and resilience to ensure business continuity means that now, more than 90% of businesses are considering maintaining or increase their expenditure and use of cloud, according to Flexera Cloud Report 2023. 

Cloud migration is no longer an option — it’s the pathway for companies to lean on an always modern infrastructure with the latest technologies to innovate, generate new customer experiences, or even anticipate market demands. However, if the right steps are not taken at the right time, migration can be costly and complex. 

Five keys we would like to share for a smooth transition. 

1. Leadership support: Cloud migration is a business decision, not just a technological implementation. Therefore, if it is part of the company’s digital transformation strategy and is endorsed by the organization’s leaders, chances of success and sustainability are significantly higher for this project. 

2. Focus on the business: Focus your attention on how the cloud will enable business growth or how strategy is aligned with the organizational purpose. Businesses often tend to worry about technical issues, get bogged down in complex IT landscapes, or suffer disproportionately trying to protect applications and data from growing cyber threats. Reality is that all of these situations can be delegated to a technology partner’s expert hands. 

3. Keep it simple: Certainly, hybrid and multi-cloud environments offer unlimited flexibility levels, opening the door to new management and governance challenges, though. This is why, having solutions with a single point of monitoring and control of the entire architecture is essential. Businesses need the agility of public cloud as well as the security and control of private cloud in a single, integrated solution to give you the freedom to build, evaluate, and run applications where necessary, with utmost performance and cost control. 

4. A solution to every need: There are different cloud providers with diverse proposals. There is always one that best fits a specific company’s requirements. We need to bet on flexible contracts, since they will allow you to choose the best alternative at all times, and even change dynamically if the business so requires. Accordingly, the presence of a technology partner capable of managing these bonds becomes important again. 

5. Metrics and improvements. Workload migration to the cloud is barely the first step in a continuous improvement process. With the right metrics, based on analytical tools, artificial intelligence and big data, companies can bet to optimize performance, costs, or usability of their cloud solutions. 

Hybrid cloud brings significant advantages for organizations.  To benefit from them, in Cirion we provide a set of solutions for cloud migration in a safe manner, with top performance and best security, scalability and connectivity levels.

Author:
Gabriel del Campo

VP Data Center, Cloud & Security
Cirion Technologies

According to different studies, data centers consume approximately 2% of the electricity produced worldwide.  The evolution of new technologies, digital transformation progress and the exponential growth in use of data and apps. could increase that figure by 4-fold globally by 2030. This increase could be higher in Latin America, which is slightly behind in its growth curve. 

Global data centers with high-availability levels, wide coverage and efficient use of energy represent an unprecedented opportunity for economic and technological development. 

Companies in this industry need to take some immediate action. The development of responsible practices through the deployment of ESG strategies (acronym in English for environmental, social and corporate governance actions) is the first step to ensure a sustainable outlook in the mid run, clear goals to reduce carbon footprint, and the necessary metrics to confirm that you are on the right pathway. 

These initiatives must encompass both construction of new data centers, and management, operation and delivery of existing services.  Among the best practices to reduce consumption we have solid-state drive technologies, way more efficient; archive to avoid having online information, which is not accessed frequently; virtualization of anything we can, and data deduplication to gain efficiency in backup and storage operations. 

On the other hand, Artificial Intelligence is getting to new data-based decision-making levels to optimize the need for servers that are on, or workload distribution. 

Efficient from the ground up

From the new data centers standpoint, it is essential to think about efficient architectures and technologies from scratch. The fact that data are increasingly distributed drives the adoption of edge type infrastructures, which must be installed away from big cities.  Data centers increase their capillarity and coverage.  Therefore, a careful choice of the site where it will be installed matters, ensuring there will be energy available for its development, emphasizing the availability of clean or renewable energy. 

Latin American countries are beginning to assess the inclusion of renewables in their energy matrices. However, more limited but equally high-impact measures can be taken today. For example, incorporation of solar energy for intermediate network transmission nodes, which because of their lower consumption, can be supplied this way. In any case, industry is expectant on the advancement of new renewable technologies, such as green hydrogen. Without a doubt, as soon as it reaches an adequate maturity level, it will be appropriately deployed to feed data centers. 

Another characteristic point in the region, which calls for a regulatory evolution is that, in general and apart from some specific exceptions, there is a single energy supplier for each geographical region. This means that industry players are not able to access to electricity providers redundancy, although they do have access to connections with different substations from the same provider. This represents an additional challenge in terms of design, construction, operation, and development of contingency plans to ensure high availability. 

In order to think about a future of highly sustainable data centers, the free energy market must be promoted in each of our countries in tandem with a greater drive for renewable energies. To that end, a joint and collaborative work is essential, engaging authorities of the different countries involved; utilities, and of course the companies that are part of this industry. Again, according to the definition of synergy, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Author:
Gabriel del Campo
VP Data Center, Cloud & Security
Cirion Technologies