< Previouswww.networkseuropemagazine.com shape of work to come 40 The shape of (automated) work to come shape of work to come www.networkseuropemagazine.com 41 Matthew Clemente EVP Lemongrass Consulting In the new world of work, people still go to offices (social distancing notwithstanding), but where we once saw ourselves ‘do’ work, we now more widely ‘exist and engage’ inside so-called workflows. Whether workflows are captured and defined on basic spreadsheets or more formalised Human Capital Management (HCM) and Business Intelligence (BI) systems, their presence enables us to start building data- driven businesses. Driving the data-driven business As the data-driven business now exists online, we are able to harness artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) and bring its intelligent automation to bear upon business workflow systems that may not have been reinvented for decades. The AI and ML adoption curve has been comparatively flat over these first couple of post-millennial decades, but the spectrum of workplace application use cases that these technologies have now been validated for widens every day. Where people perhaps just a decade ago still dismissed ‘robotics’ as a fanciful notion best confined to the movies, a tangible awareness of software robots (often simply just called bots) has now proliferated. Automation power from software bots in the form of robotic process automation (RPA) can provide us with efficiencies that help manage and direct workflow systems for improved performance, all while lowering the total cost of ownership. In the current era, we can now work to deliver customised implementations of these tools across the whole transept of an organisation’s operational base. Digital automation used prudently enables a business to utilise the same tool for a wide range of data and situations, which will all derive different results. Orchestrated, automated and accelerated As an illustrative real-world working example, if we look at automation efficiencies inside an ERP system like SAP, we can see a large number of diverse automations all being executed concurrently. There is some fairly complex orchestration behind this type of deployment, but these systems thrive on this kind of augmentation. Well-engineered AI refines the strength of the digital DNA being woven at any given point in time throughout an organisation’s IT stack. We can now use AI-driven and ML-steered controls to provide intuitive acceleration created from patterns observed over time, thus broadening the functionality of the total system, system suite and application use cases in question. Organisations who adopt this orchestrated, automated and accelerated approach can start to create new streams of autonomous advantage across all departments. Tasks that could be performed by software bots are taken away from humans, freeing up time inside the same digital workflows for more creative, higher-value, innovative work. In our SAP example, we can also orchestrate elements of the workflow to happen at more cost-efficient times of the day. The business can move database-centric batch jobs to the evening so that higher priority, intensive jobs can be performed during the workday. Human hand-off control All of this happens under human control and observation, on our ‘watch’ throughout. We decide what happens when, where and how. Human operatives are needed to perform ‘hand-off’ functions where AI software doesn’t know what to do next. Although AI engines will learn more each time, they only know what they know based upon what data they are exposed to, obviously. This is not some dystopian rise of the robots. This is a far more utopian view of the rise of software robots and the automation advantages that come with it. Staying in our SAP systems administration environment, these benefits mean that system administrators and other operations engineers can spin up cloud services and start up systems in an automated way to perform auto- healing actions related to a variety of ERP system events. These could be security provisioning issues, maintenance tasks, data deduplication processes, or other forms of standardised system patches and fixes. First steps to automation Above all, intelligent automation must always be seamless and non-disruptive; applying these technologies based upon robust, tightly defined best practises by working with established partners who have experience across a variety of transactional and analytical use cases, is an important first step. Innovative automation technology should be capable of shouldering the ‘grunt’ work (donkey work, if you prefer) that can lead to human error, workflow inefficiencies and ultimately result in the production of lower quality products and services. Understanding that this opportunity exists is sometimes the hardest part; there is a cultural shift needed here among C-suite management and throughout departmental divisions all the way down to the most junior employees. As an overriding principle, the business must realise that automation efficiencies should not be driven from a sole point of top-down edict. This is because bottom-up workflow aspirations and goals from worker stakeholders must form part of every organisation’s wider automation strategy. People will still go to offices and workflows will continue to evolve, but user experience (as a precursor and conduit to customer experience) must now be part of every organisation’s operational strategy. If automation can improve any aspect of that total process, then it should be brought online. n People used to go to offices and ‘do’ work. That core business reality does still exist, but much has changed in the last quarter-century as a result of the deeper penetration of digital platforms, the arrival of cloud computing and the new application of intelligence accelerators.This means achieving operational zero carbon by 2030 through the phasing out of fossil fuels and transitioning to renewables, while keeping the lights on. All the time assuaging the fears and concerns of governments, regulators, activists and the market about the speed and reliability of transition. In the energy sector, legacy versus new means complexities. As Thomas Egebo, CEO, Energinet - Denmark’s power transmission system operator- told an Accenture hosted session at COP26, there are 3 key topics to address: • How to operate a fully inverter-based system without balance and inertia from traditional generators. • The development of tools, data and metrics to analyse and plan a 100% green system in order to end uncertainty. • Develop the control of the future – to harvest decentralised capacity. As the grid decarbonises, the capacity and stability challenges will increase. Due to the asynchronous nature of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, it is forecast that the closer the power system gets to being carbon zero, the greater the likelihood of an imbalance between supply and demand. In order to correct this imbalance, it is likely that the power utilities will turn to the data centre sector to find Data centre operators who may feel over scrutinised and under sustainability pressures regarding the greenness of their operations could do worse than to consider what their peers in the energy sector are experiencing. Many of them will have chosen a career in energy as a stable, mature and relatively unchanging industry. Today, they are tasked with nothing less than achieving the global decarbonisation of power systems in less than a decade. Ed Ansett Founder i 3 Solutions Group engaging with utilities www.networkseuropemagazine.com 42 How can data centres expect to engage with utilities in 2022? additional decentralised, low carbon capacity due to the vast quantities of their underutilised energy storage and generation capacity. How will a transitioning energy sector affect the data centre sector? The implications for data centres are profound and raise many questions. For instance, how can data centres engage with utilities as they transition to net zero? What technologies are available for them to become part of a sustainable partnership ecosystem with grid operators? How much untapped power capacity do they already have? How can they provide and prove their contributions are verifiably low carbon and sustainable? It is clear that both older and newer data centres have untapped capacity which could be made available to help with the greening of the grid. But just like the utility grid, data centre systems comprise a mix of old and new technologies. This raises a further question about how suitable current infrastructure is for providing clean energy. Natural gas engines, for example, might be seen as a low carbon footprint solution to deliver dispatchable power back to the grid. Certainly, lower than some other fossil fuels. How “low carbon” is actually defined and measured has yet to be agreed, but it could be that utilities will reward those able to provide low carbon capacity. Such an incentive may spur data centre companies to invest in infrastructure to reap these rewards. For data centres and the power companies, the end state is no harmful carbon emissions. For the data centre sector, that state might look like a world of closed carbon cycle bio-fuelled generators, and battery energy storage back-up being powered by excess renewable energy. Achieving integration between the grid and data centres in this way will require a series of incremental steps, many of which are, as yet, unclear and undefined. It will require flexibility on both sides as well as the embracing of new business models to make it happen. There are already plenty of initiatives planned and in progress. There is, for example, the promise of 100s of GWs of offshore renewable energy in the UK. There are also pilot projects within data centres for scaling up hydrogen powered operations. Should data centres overcome inertia towards Demand Response? The challenge is that to date, there has too often been a reluctance on the part of data centre operators to provide Demand Response services. This is in part due to a focus on their primary function – that of maintaining continuous power and cooling to the IT load. However, today DR could present a logical bridge to further collaboration. In the data centre operator space one possible scenario is that a global giant - an Equinix, Digital Realty or CyrusOne on the commercial side or an Amazon or Microsoft cloud hyperscaler - agrees commercial power sharing deals with a utility. This could spark a rush to get some skin in the game. But that begs a rather big question, if GWs of valuable power capacity exist inside existing data centres then doesn’t the lack of discussion between operators and utilities appear rather short sighted? By ignoring Demand Response options, data centre operators who don’t engage with an energy sector in transition could find themselves being left out in the cold, resulting in missed opportunities for gaining both new revenues and green credentials. For a traditionally conservative sector where margins are often under pressure, this would appear to be an unusually high-risk strategy. n engaging with utilities www.networkseuropemagazine.com 43How the last two years have affected the data centre industry future of the new normal www.networkseuropemagazine.com 44Jack Bedell- Pearce CEO and co-founder 4D Data Centres The impact - Covid-19 Covid-19 has hit certain parts of the economy hard and while the adoption of more cloud and remote working services has been a boon for data centres, it’s not all been plain sailing for the sector. The domino effect of international supply chains being disrupted at the start of the pandemic in 2020 continues to plague the sector. Microchips used in servers, routers and firewalls are in short supply which has led to cost increases and long lead times on orders. While chip production has ramped up and supply chains are slowly unclogging, the pent up demand from other sectors (most visibly the automotive manufacturing sector which is struggling to deliver modern cars on time) will continue to impact the tech sector long past 2022. Freedom of movement restrictions due to Covid-19 have impacted the ability of tech companies to hire from overseas in the past two years. While this will ease in 2022 as we move from a pandemic to an endemic phase, a deficit of skilled technical engineers in the UK will continue to dampen growth. ow the years ffected centre dustry With a new year now upon us, those in the industry are reflecting on the past 12 months and the lessons that can be learnt from the changes wrought by Covid-19 since 2020. The data centre industry continues to adapt to meet the demands of businesses moving towards a long-term WFA (Work from Anywhere) model. The pace of digital transformation and the widespread adoption of hybrid-IT is accelerating. So how have these changes shaped the data centre and cloud sectors over the past two years and what does this mean for 2022? future of the new normal www.networkseuropemagazine.com 45Many data centres are already pledging to reach a net-zero emissions target by 2030. This is even more ambitious than the same pledge set by the UK government but with a deadline 20 years later in 2050. Digital transformation The demand over the past two years has however created something of a coiled spring within the economy, which bodes well for the data centre sector. Despite a mild Omicron- related stumble in December 2021 (which is already showing signs of abating), the economy is poised to re-bounce significantly in 2022. As remote working becomes a reality and companies generally adopt a flexible approach to working at home and in the office, businesses are starting to implement the digital transformation plans that were created in the preceding 18 months. While there will always be winners and losers from this kind of change, data centres are likely to be net beneficiaries. Better home and office connectivity will be required and more SaaS solutions will be adopted - all of which need data centres that host cloud servers and fibre routes. Security and resiliency A lot of businesses in the UK have taken positive steps in recent years towards reviewing and improving their data security, not only to be compliant with GDPR but also to mitigate the significant costs that come with a data breach or ransomware attack. These attacks can not only be costly in terms of reputational damage and bitcoin (to future of the new normal www.networkseuropemagazine.com 46unencrypt the ransomed data) but also in time lost from systems being offline. Uptime has therefore become a much higher priority for businesses now that they know their home workers will be sitting idly if systems are knocked offline. Greater scrutiny is being paid to where services are being hosted. Are the servers physically located in the UK (or even in the EU) and how well maintained are the data centres in which these systems live? With some very public outages from major hosting providers like Meta, AWS and Azure in 2021, companies are looking carefully at backup systems and considering hosting their most critical systems on hardware/private clouds they own themselves. Private clouds are not the cheapest option out there, nor are good quality established data centres. But compared to the cost of an entire business grinding to a halt because of downtime, they tend to work out as the most cost effective in the long run. The environment and sustainability With Glasgow COP26 still fresh in our minds, there is significant pressure on data centres to work towards lowering overall emissions. Fortunately, the mere act of moving servers from an office into a colocation data centre (as has been the trend since offices were downscaled during the Covid-19 pandemic) lowers overall emissions as data centres are generally more efficient than in-house server rooms. Not to rest on its laurels though, many data centres are already pledging to reach a net-zero emissions target by 2030. This is even more ambitious than the same pledge set by the UK government but with a deadline twenty years later in 2050. In 2022, we'll see a lot of the next generation data centres being built with green technology at their core. Where space allows, evaporative cooling will continue to supersede traditional condenser cooling systems, though even these are making leaps and bounds in efficiency. To reduce the losses in power transmissions, we may even see some data centres being designed and built with local power production (in the form of green hydrogen or biofuel). As well as being more efficient, these mini power plants would in theory offer greater stability for the data centre and may end up supplying excess power to local residents and businesses. n future of the new normal www.networkseuropemagazine.com 47Brian Lavallée Senior Director Portfolio Marketing Ciena Over the past year, there’s been a lot of attention related to several new Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellation announcements from multiple network operators. These space-based networks leverage new satellites, many more of them when compared to traditional satellite networks, orbiting much closer to Earth. The combination of new satellite transmission technology coupled with many more satellites orbiting much closer to the Earth’s surface, enables game-changing aggregate capacities at much lower latency. LEO networks are mostly complementary to existing terrestrial and cellular networks when providing high-performance connectivity to traditionally underserved end-users, both humans and machines. The main targeted end-users are people in geographic areas, such as rural communities, that are underserved by wireline (broadband) and/or wireless (cellular) connectivity. Targeted end-users can also be machines like cell towers in areas not adequately served by wireless (microwave) or wireline (fibre) backhaul networks, offshore oil rigs, as well as ships, aeroplanes and trains travelling beyond fibre or wireless network coverage. Most LEO satellite network operators will target, at least initially, geographic areas where existing wireless and wireline network coverage and/or performance is lacking. Targeting these areas will help address the Digital Divide by allowing more communities to enjoy what’s become a human right – reliable and affordable high- speed internet access regardless of where one lives, works, and plays. Connecting to the final frontier LEO networks www.networkseuropemagazine.com 48cting to space – al frontier LEO networks www.networkseuropemagazine.com 49Next >