In a recent report, the Uptime Institute estimated that the Data Center Industry will need to find 300,000 more staff by 2025 (Data centers need to find 300,000 more staff by 2025 - DCD (datacenterdynamics.com). This is not a new finding. Multiple sources have been warning about a wave of retiring employees and data center operators have reported trouble filling open positions. In a different survey by the Uptime Institute, 50% of those surveyed said they were currently having trouble finding candidates for open positions. This percentage has grown over the last few years, up from 41% in 2019 and 38% in 2018 (Uptime Institute Annual Global Data Center Survey 2020).
There are a range of causes for the staffing problem. One cause is the upcoming ‘silver tsunami’ when a cohort of experienced professionals will retire and leave behind numerous unfilled jobs and a vast experience gap. This is a problem since there is not a new wave of younger employees to take their place. The lack of replacements is partly caused by the limited awareness of career opportunities in data centers. A recent report also pointed out that employers may be placing too high a bar in terms of requirements for new workers, contributing to their own problem in finding workers.
Digging further in the anticipated job requirements, a vast majority of the jobs are in operations with a much smaller percentage needed for engineering or construction of the data centers. Since most of the operations staff is required to be on site, this further complicates the problem since the data centers may be located in remote areas with cheap power and cooling but where there are limited skilled staff.
With all the challenges of staffing described above, one obvious solution is automation. “There's been huge interest in automating data center jobs,” said Rhonda Ascierto, Uptime Institute’s Vice President of Research, "and interest in automation has skyrocketed during the pandemic." While there will be some jobs that can’t be automated due to the complexity or troubleshooting nature of the work, the staffing challenge will force an evaluation of areas that can be automated. One area that can be automated is the physical fiber interconnect – the last remaining layer of the optical network stack to be automated.
Telescent has developed their Network Topology Manager (NTM) that uses a robot to remotely configure and reconfigure cross connects in minutes. When a reconfiguration is requested, a robot-driven gripper removes an internal fiber from the original port and moves it to the desired new port. The patented algorithm identifies the unique path to route the fiber around the other internal fibers in the system to establish a non-blocking, any-to-any connection allowing a reconfiguration to be made no matter how many prior changes have been made to the system. The Telescent system is designed in a pay-as-you-grow model and can be scaled from as few as 144 ports to >10,000 ports while still preserving the ability for any-to-any connectivity. All connections in the Telescent NTM are low-loss and latched, maintaining connections in the case of any power outage and the system is fully field maintainable without interrupting traffic. Since the reconfigurations are controlled by software, all connections are recorded in a database and the state of any connection can be verified at any time providing machine accurate inventory for accurate billing to customers while also avoiding errors with reconfiguration. Power monitoring is included with the NTM, and an optional OTDR system allows additional diagnostic capability of the attached fiber plant. Finally, the Telescent NTM is NEBS Level 3 certified to ensure the dependability that customers demand.
An added benefit of using the Telescent NTM for automation is reliability and uptime. Surveys show that up to 70% of downtime in data centers are caused by human errors. The Telescent system ensures the fiber ends are cleaned, avoid Tx/Rx roll errors and always makes the connection that was ordered (and records it correctly in the database). While not every function in the data center can be automated, using the Telescent NTM helps alleviate some of the need for finding qualified employees.