The desire for a low-cost optical switch has been around for decades. As seen with long-haul networks in the late 1990s, the value of all-optical networks enabled by optical switches is greatest where the transmission bandwidth demand is greatest.
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Data centers consume a lot of power. A single data center can consume as much power as a city and it is estimated that data centers account for ~2% of the total US energy consumption.
As reported in a recent Foundations newsletter “Equinix recently notified customers that prices would be increasing for both Cross Connects and Smart Hands, specifically citing the global macro environment including rising energy, construction, and labor costs.”
The benefits of automating fiber interconnects in data centers are obvious. Automation can reduce operational expenses, eliminate human error, speed up service offerings, and improve efficiency.
Fiber optics is the plumbing of data centers. While the computation, storage, and switching equipment are the focus in data center design, all this equipment is connected by many thousands of fiber optic cables.
There is a well-known saying from a successful venture capitalist that “software is eating the world.” [1] In the article from 2011 written by Marc Andreessen, he made the point that young start-up companies based on software were able to compete against established companies and disrupt whole industries. I
There is a growing recognition of the need to deliver interconnection services faster to meet customer demand. This is highlighted by a recent article by Verizon and Equinix announcing a Software Defined Interconnect service
As optical networks have evolved to higher data rates to handle the astronomical increases in traffic, the percentage of network costs associated with optical components has grown significantly.
Multi-tenant data centers (MTDC) are one of the key parts of the interconnected world we now live in. One of the main functions they provide is a location for enterprises and networks to meet and exchange data.
If you’ve ever watched a marathon, you know that a group usually heads to the front and stays together for much of the race. But the saying goes that the race isn’t won on the flat areas – the race is won on the hills.
This has happened to all of us at some point. Maybe not spinach, but after a meal you have had something stuck in your teeth for a while. You don’t notice it, and after talking to several people (who could have commented on it) only later does a friend point it out to you.
Several people probably saw the spinach before your friend pointed it out to you – so why didn’t they tell you? Maybe they felt they were not ‘close enough friends’ with you and so pretended it just wanted there. Maybe they knew you might be embarrassed and so they wanted to avoid being the one that pointed it out to you. Of course, by not pointing it out, you were more embarrassed later.
Whatever the reason, I think when someone finally points out the spinach in our teeth, we are grateful to them for helping us. Like the spinach, there are often many things in life where we can benefit by having those around us point out areas for improvement – things we just might not notice in ourselves. This might be having a post-mortem review following a sales call to discuss what worked and how we can improve. It might be where we misunderstood a vendor’s questions and so our response was incomplete. It might be where we were not as thoughtful as we could have been in interaction and didn’t treat someone with respect. Of course, this feedback must be given in a supportive and positive manner, and not in a way to demean or reduce the person getting feedback.
However, the only way we can improve is by getting feedback – which means being receptive enough to welcome the feedback and surrounding ourselves with people who care enough about us to point out how we can improve.
Let’s help each other out and make sure to point out the spinach in the teeth when it is there.