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The data center development activity in the Dallas region suggests growing confidence in the future growth of demand in the Greater Dallas market. (Image: Digital Realty)

Last week we launched a special report series on the Dallas data center market. This week, well look at trends in market supply and demand in the Dallas/Ft. Worth region.

One of the primary factors driving data center activity in Dallas is the healthy economy and the growing list of large businesses, which generates demand for digital infrastructure.

Data center requirements in the DFW market come from companies both in and out of the market. The area is home to the corporate headquarters of 18 Fortune 500 companies including Exxon Mobil, JC Penney, AT&T, Texas Instruments, and others. State Farms data center in Richardson, just south of their 2.5 million SF regional office campus, is a good example.

In addition, a portion of the data center activity has come from companies tasked with upgrading aged data center infrastructure within an owned facility. Instead of reinvesting in the existing operation, many of those companies have chosen to house their infrastructure with colocation providers, fueling development in the area. This trend is pervasive across all major markets.

Companies from outside the Dallas market view the area as strategic for multiple reasons, including its central location. For enterprises that have data centers in primary coastal markets such as Northern California or New York City, the DFW market is a logical location to be in the center of the United States. In addition, the steady colocation supply delivered over the past few years puts DFW in a position to compete for large, national projects. Larger colocation providers completed record transaction sizes in DFW over the past few years, with some being as large as 10 MW of critical load.

The DFW market has been the beneficiary from the growth of cloud computing as well. Cloud providers, including IBM Softlayer and Rackspace have placed their infrastructure with larger colocation providers. For instance, at Digital Realtys 68-acre Richardson campus, a major portion of the 86 MW at the campus is accounted for by cloud providers. Additionally, hyperscale cloud companies are actively developing their own data centers and leasing capacity throughout the region. Its anticipated this trend will continue, as data center users further embrace cloud computing and cloud providers rely on larger colocation providers for infrastructure support.

From a demand perspective, the DFW market averages approximately 30 MWs of net new growth per year. This growth traditionally comes from financial, technology, managed services/cloud, telecommunications, and the healthcare industry. To handle the anticipated demand, several providers have announced expansions and/or entrances into DFW.

Its anticipated that pricing will remain aggressive in the DFW market given the amount of supply and new companies that are entering the market.

Development in the Dallas market is driven by major wholesale data center providers, who have been creating multi-building campuses to support long- term growth. Colocation and hyperscale players are also eyeing future capacity, adding up to massive planned capacity of 811 megawatts (5.5 million square feet) in Dallas/Fort Worth.

Nearly all of that is for future runway. There were just 11.25 megawatts of data center capacity under construction in 2Q 2021, representing 60,000 square feet. Thats an increase from just 2 MWs in 1Q 2021 and 4 MWs in 4Q 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic has been a factor in the construction slowdown, but some other markets (most notably Northern Virginia) saw building booms as the pandemic prompted major shifts to online delivery models for work, learning and entertainment.

The primary factor in the subdued pace of new construction is the inventory outlook in Dallas. There was 51 MWs of commissioned capacity available in 2Q 2021, while the leasing over the previous 12 months absorbed about 32 MWs, with 3.3 MWs coming in the second quarter, according to datacenterHawk. The vacancy rate was 11.96% in 2Q.

This is remarkably similar to the supply picture at the beginning of 2018, when the Dallas market had 50 MWs of available capacity, and 11 MWs under construction only with a higher vacancy rate of 15%. This history is important, reflecting a disciplined approach to expansion by providers in Dallas/Fort Worth, where most of the leading players have significant experience operating in the region.

This ample supply of available space, along with the number of providers in the market, creates a tenant- friendly buyers market. But several recent deals have begun to change that dynamic, as the large cloud and SaaS (software-as-a-service) players gobble up data center space in large chunks.

The key question is whether hyperscalers will build or buy. Some cloud platforms and SaaS providers have leased wholesale space in Dallas. But the largest deployments have been company-built campuses for Facebook in Fort Worth and Google in Midlothian, 25 miles southwest of Dallas.

Digital Realty has also sourced solar power from Pattern Energys 82.5 MW Phoenix Solar Project in Fannion County Texas to support its data center portfolio in Greater Dallas.

The regions data center capacity is spread across several sub-markets, including major carrier hotels in downtown Dallas, a nexus of wholesale data centers in the Telecom Corridor in Richardson, Plano, Garland and Allen. These northern suburbs are emerging as key to the regions data center supply, offering more land for the multi-building campuses that developers covet.

Fort Worth is about 30 miles West of Downtown Dallas, and has emerged as a sub-market to watch in the wake of Facebooks decision to build a data center campus in the Alliance Gateway business park.

Heres a look at some of the recent developments shaping the data center market in Dallas/Fort Worth area.

Download the full report, Dallas Data Center Market, courtesy of Digital Realty to learn more about this competitive data center market. In our next article, well the explore the regions business environment, including power, disaster risk, tax incentives, and connectivity. Catch up on the previous article here.

Go here to read the rest:
Shaping the Dallas Data Center Market: Supply and Demand Trends - Data Center Frontier

What does the future of data networking look like in 2022? If the past two years are any indicators, we are entering a challenging year where supply chain issues, the impact of unforeseen variants, and a recovering global economy will set the stage.

Next year will be about continuing to build resiliency and cloud native computing to the edge. Increased demands from emerging applications from industrial IoT to virtual and augmented reality, autonomous vehicles and even the metaverse mean that we will see increasing innovative technologies with high bandwidth and low latency requirements that will impose on network buildouts. Were now a few years into the 5G era, and there is still a long road to travel before we can fully realize the benefits of 5G. Here are some predictions:

#1: Convergence of fixed and mobile for 'seamless services'

The intersections between the fixed network and 5G mobile networks will be a key component in the success of 5G deployment in 2022 and beyond. These are the interfaces between the 5G core, the wireline and wireless access networks, hybrid access nodes, and gateways.

3GPP is the 5G standardization buddy, working jointly with Broadband Forum to ensure that 5G packet core works for not only 3GPP access but also non-3GPP access such as Wi-Fi 6, fiber and so on. This means that a single 5G packet core infrastructure will be capable of sustaining all the main access technologies in the marketplace. Thus Wi-Fi 6 and 5G could be combined into a single radio network pillar for some larger venues, creating a more seamless experience, allowing Wi-Fi and mobile devices to connect to a single radio network based on 5G technology. The possibilities here are exciting.

Work towards 3GGP standardization, Release 18, will also begin in mid-2022. The fourth standard for 5G, dubbed "5G Advanced, " includes major enhancements in artificial intelligence and extended reality enabling highly intelligent network solutions to support a wider variety of use cases and more intelligence into wireless networks. These enhancements will provide the foundation for 5G manufacturing and industrial IoT applications.

#2: Cloud computing meets edge computing

We will continue to see the emergence of new applications hungry for ultra-reliable low latency communications applications from the connected car to interactive gaming, industrial robotics to the metaverse and more.

All these applications require latency below ten milliseconds. The public cloud is currently only capable of sustaining latency radically higher than ten milliseconds. The need for lower latency will ignite more enthusiasm towards Edge computing, bringing compute power closer to the devices that consume data and services. As a result, edge computing will continue to be a growing phenomenon next year, seeing more expansion to the edge.

#3: Need for more distributed cloud

The moment you combine large centralized public cloud with smaller edge data centers leads to the need for the distributed cloud. Distributed cloud is a public cloud computing service that lets you run public cloud infrastructure in multiple locations and manage everything from a single control plane.

Distributed cloud is the foundation of edge computing, viewed as creating a slice like a virtual data center that can span across multiple physical geographically distributed data centers, which allows service providers to deploy applications consistently regardless of where the physical application resides. This concept plays a key role in providing high availability services as we move forward.

#4: Migration towards 5G cloud native applications

The bulk of new applications will all be cloud native. It will be based on a DevOps environment, integrate continuous development, and be built using microservices over containers rather than traditional virtual machines or bare metal servers. 5G cloud native infrastructure is a key component and entirely necessary to reduce the overall costs of these services and applications.

#5: Rise of 5G private infrastructure

We will see growth in the deployment of private 5G networks next year in manufacturing facilities, airports, stadiums and 5G private networks at corporate headquarters. These will be deployed either over licensed or unlicensed spectrum and are fundamental for the success of 5G. More than 90% of data consumed by devices or users while indoors could be from a private 5G network; thus, it is imperative to ensure that with 5G, we get good coverage.

The 5G Core is the heart of a 5G mobile network. In 2022 momentum for standalone 5G rollouts will continue, but there is still a long road to go. A recent survey of mobile operators by Heavy Reading in October 2021 revealed that 49% of operators plan to deploy 5G SA within a year and that a further 39% plan to deploy 5G SA within one or two years.

Standalone 5G is ten times faster, supports 10,000 times more network traffic and can handle 100 times more devices than 4G networks while enabling one-fiftieth the latency with zero perceived downtime for near-real-time responsiveness. It can also support massive numbers of devices, faster and more agile creation of services and network slices, and improved SLA management support within those slices.

With specialized machine-to-machine communication protocols and many emerging applications, massive IoT is waiting for 5G infrastructure to deploy. The pandemic and the challenges to the supply chain and delays in 5G spectrum auction may have set us back 12 to 18 months, but the overall size of the opportunity has not changed. Instead, we see a shift in time. Like our best-laid plans, we must reset our expectations and continue the course. As we have seen in previous generations of mobile, our vision for the future of data networking beyond the cloud must be long-term and sustainable.

Original post:
Beyond the Cloud: Five Incoming Trends for 2022 Featured - The Fast Mode

The federal government operatesan increasinglydistributed mission.Frombattlefields to warehouses toagricultural inspections, agencies need a technology architecturethatadaptstotheirdispersed yet complexcomputing needs.

The urgency of this need can be seen inthe astronomical rate of data growth, particularly at the edgeor beyond the traditional perimeter.By 2023,Gartnerpredictsthat over 50% of the primary responsibility of data and analytics leaders will comprise data created, managed and analyzed in edge environments.Consider sensors that monitorremote environments orwearables collecting insights fromfrontline workers; federalagenciesneedthe infrastructure to process and act on thistype ofdata, often at speed.

Edge solutions are the answer.

By combining localized computing, sophisticated Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and 5G network connectivity, edge solutions will help agencies conductdata-driven,advanced operations, no matter where the mission goes.The technology can deliver more timely analysis to soldiers on the battlefield, and can empower civilian agencies in essential mission sets, from telemedicine to disaster response.

The military recognizesthispotential. TheDefenseDepartments Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2)plans to use edge computingto connect sensorsacrossmilitarybranchesinto a single network.Thiswill givecommanders vital information to drive warfighter performance in real time.

Edge solutionscan be used tocreate aconnectedcontinuum of actionable data from the cloud all the way to theoperationaledge.The technologysgreatest potentialliesinbringingthe best of what the cloud can offer including advanced tools like artificial intelligence and machine learning to the networks last mile.

In a recent report from Accenture,Extending IT to the Missions Edge,more than nine in 10 federaltechnologyleaders say thatedgesolutions areeithervery or extremely important to meeting their agencys mission needs.

For agencies operating dispersed missions orgenerating high volumes of data, edge solutions are critical to a holistic digital transformation.Itwill takea savvy marriage of cloud and edge capabilities to ingest and operationalizeincreasing quantitiesofdataacross alluse cases.Without a focus on the edge,agenciesmay be leaving valuable databehind.

For agencies migrating to the cloud, theresat least one important reasonto consider edge solutions now:Itsmore seamlesstoincorporateedge solutionsearlier in agencies digital transformations from an IT architecture and infrastructure point of viewratherthan bolting on solutions somewhere down the line.

Inaction today also opens the door to security vulnerabilities.Newendpoints could become a cyber liability if IT leaders dont actively plan for their safeguards.More than half (54%) of those surveyedin the Accenture reportcite cyber concerns as an obstacle to edge adoption.

Theresan opportunity to architect for that risk early, by implementinga common control plane in support of cybersecurityacrossbothcloud and the edge.

Edge solutions willbecomean essential element of agencies digital transformation, but careful planning is needed today to bring that potential to fruition.

Federal leaders cantakestepstoday to beginleveragingedgesolutionsin support of improved mission outcomes.How?

Wearesoongoing tosee a divide between those who are able tounderstand and take advantage ofedge solutions, andthosewho arenot.Agencies thatmove onedge solutions will have more intelligent insights to drive action across the mission, anywhere and everywhere.

Chris Bjornson is the Cloud Practice Leadand Kyle Michl is the Chief Innovation Officerat Accenture Federal Services.

Continue reading here:
Federal operations are moving to the edge. IT must follow. - Federal News Network

Hiring activity has picked up amid demand for fresh talent as well as efforts to retain the top talent, especially in the IT sector, that has been witnessing spike in attrition rates. As the hiring demand surges, here are the some of the top roles and skills that will be in demand this year for Indian IT professionals, as per Divyesh Sindhwaad, Regional Vice President of Skillsoft.

Cybersecurity:According to Skillsoft's2021 IT Skills and Salary report, 52% of IT decision-makers in the APAC region consider cybersecurity a priority for their team. More cybersecurity professionals are needed to protect organizations' valuable data and prevent cyberattacks.

Cloud Computing:This domain has been a critical investment area for many organizations since 2017 until today in the fast-evolving digital-first world. The samereport highlights that cloud computing is a key investment area for 43% of decision-makers. So, equipping yourself with cloud computing skills such as DevOps, Serverless Architecture, Automation, and QA will boost your career.

Big Data:The art and science of collecting, analyzing, and using data securely to make informed decisions, data management is the priority for IT leaders. But organizations struggle to find qualified talent to fill big data jobs and inAPAC alone, 23% of respondents have said the same.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: AI and ML have become part of our daily lives. They significantly drive automation that simplifies systems across industries, requiring organizations to constantly look for professionals skilled in this area. Job roles in this segment will be prioritized by 34% of APAC leaders.

Internet of Things: With more and more devices connecting with each other today and adoption rates soaring, IoT has become a hot new technology for businesses. From its infancy in 2015 to 2021, IoT devices have tripled and so is the requirement for IoT engineers. But it is one of the weaker skills set as reported by organizations either due to early-stage adoption or lack of skilled professionals.

Apart from these tech skills, individuals looking to kick start or advance their careers need to also focus on power skills. Skills such as analytical and critical thinking, complex problem solving, leadership, and social influence are touted as the skills of the future according to World Economic Forums2022 Skills Outlook," said Sindhwaad.

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For IT professionals, these are the 5 job roles to be in demand this year - Mint