Data rules

The data centre has risen from back-office requirement to a critical aspect of a 21 st century company’s operations. For a better understanding of its significance, CXO catches up with Malcolm Barnett, Managing Director Corning Cable Systems EMEA.

CXO Is increased bandwidth demand a key growth driver in the data centre market?
MB. Absolutely. The data centre industry worldwide enjoys an unparalleled growth period driven by an increasing demand for data processing and storage, stimulated by many factors, including the rise of internet, all kind of web-based rich-media applications, VoIP, and video-conferencing, just to mention a few.

Whether you build aircraft, run a power plant or make loans, data centres have become vital for business operations, playing today a key strategic role in virtually every industry.

As a result, investment in data centres is higher than ever. Last year Microsoft and Google alone announced more than €2.6 billion in data centre projects. This growth landscape represents a unique opportunity for structured cabling suppliers. The data centre cabling market is projected to grow from current €630 million to €1.4 billion in 2011 at an average annual growth rate of almost 27%. That is simply phenomenal.

CXO How can cabling drive profitability in the data centre?
MB. Amounting to around 5 percent of the total cost of a data centre, cabling might be perceived as a non-critical factor. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth. CIOs today understand that structured cabling represents a fundamental cornerstone of data centres and they are beginning to see cabling as a crucial investment. CIOs demand cables that deliver the best quality, ensure top performance and can handle what it is to come. Data centre downtime can cost a major brokerage firm up to €3.8 million per hour. And some industry reports reckon that one-millisecond advantage in trading applications can be worth €64 million a year. You don’t want to take a risk on reliability. And you want to make sure that what you buy today will still be good enough in 20 or 25 years.

CXO. How can fibre optic cabling infrastructures maximize ROI in the data centre?
MB. Together with growing bandwidth demand, the need for advanced data centres is driven by sky-rocketing energy prices, cooling efficiencies and space utilisation – not to mention environmental concerns. In this setting, fibre is king. The truth is, copper is having a hard time coping with higher data rates; it’s bulkier, more complex and the total cost of network ownership is much higher.

Fibre optic cable consumes less power and is cheaper to cool – 10G (Gigabit Ethernet) optical electronics need between 10 to 15 times less energy than their 10GBase-T copper alternative. And higher power consumption means more heat that needs to be cooled. Using fibre instead of copper can represent up to 80% energy savings. But there’s more to it as 10G-fibre optic cable uses about five percent of the space of its copper equivalent, so the potential savings in tray and cabinet space and greater efficiencies in airflow are impressive.

And should our customer ever need 10G or even faster transmission speeds, only optical connectivity ensures bandwidth performance that support current and future data rate demands up to 100G. Installing fibre eliminates the need to tear out old cable and laying down new ones should bandwidth requirements suddenly increase. That is not true for competing technologies.

CXO. How does Corning Cable Systems leverage the best of optical networking?
MB. Eventually, increased bandwidth demand will require migration beyond 10G to 40G and 100G. At Corning we make sure that our customers’ data centre infrastructures will meet the requirements of today and tomorrow. That is why our Plug & Play Universal System is 100 Gigabit Ethernet ready, capable of reliably supporting transmission speeds up to 100G with laser-optimized multimode fibre.

Corning is unique in that it develops its own fibre, cable and connectivity solutions. Also we have a long history of innovation. Indeed, this year our laboratories in the US are celebrating their 100 th anniversary. We are therefore confident that we have developed and will continue to improve the most efficient solution for data centres: factory-terminated optical fibre cabling systems. Corning’s Plug & Play Universal System not only delivers the broadest bandwidth performance, it also reduces installation time up to 75% and save up to 60% space, dramatically improving our customers’ ROI.

Malcolm D. Barnett, Managing Director of Corning Cable Systems EMEA, began his career in cable technology with BICC Communications, where he held a number of successively responsible positions, including sales, business manager, managing director and director of technology. With Corning’s acquisition of the company in 1999, he accepted the position of managing director, Corning Cables Limited. In 2000, Barnett became SVP of Sales & Marketing, Corning Cable Systems EU, a position he held until 2001 when he accepted his current responsibilities as managing director for the company.