Data Center and Cloud
Data centers are the heart of delivering IT services by providing storage, compute resources, communications, and networking to the devices, users, and business processes and applications. Data centers are designed with proper power and cooling requirements to sustain large amounts of servers for the processing of data. Recently, data analytics have added value and growth in data centers by touching on aspects of an enterprise and its processes.
The growth of cloud-based services is due to an increased focus on business agility and cost optimization. The adoption of cloud services and applications enables faster delivery of services with improved operational efficiencies. Connecting to public-based cloud services can provide additional cost reductions with improved accessibility, with the assumption that a mechanism exists to encrypt/protect the data in transit.
Latency can become an issue with sending all the data from sensors to the cloud or DC. Depending on the amount of time for a packet to transmit from a thing to a DC, analysis of the data at the DC with the proper response sent back to the thing could exceed an acceptable amount of time. For example, suppose a camera takes a photo of a manufacturing line as parts leave a stamping press for visual inspection as part of the quality control process. Inferior parts should be discarded and removed from the conveyor belt as they are moved to the next station. If there is too much latency, a failed part could move down the conveyor belt. One solution could be to lower the speed of the conveyor belt, but that might reduce the performance of that manufacturing facility.