The virtual and physical realms are becoming increasingly enmeshed through the world of the Internet of Things. The rate of Internet connections is outpacing companies’ abilities to secure them. As a result, a large driver of cybercrime is the least-protected networks and systems found in the healthcare information technology world – building automation, or smart building technology.
To date, the smart building’s health applications have focused on maintaining the best indoor temperature for occupants, developing lighting in tune with the human circadian rhythm, or improving air quality with sensors-enabled ventilation. While all these systems do support general health and, therefore, an improved ability to fight disease, they do not help control the spread of coronavirus. With many experts claiming that this kind of pandemic may become more common in the decades ahead, the smart building may need to start looking into its in-depth toolkit to see how it can help.
Conversion to smart buildings turns a former cost into an enabler of business. Digitally enabled office space can be personalized, so the profile of the person working in a given area — immediately on login — dictates information access, security protocols, climate control preferences, room automation and services access/charging and much more. The building effectively becomes a multi-faceted administrative assistant, automatically managed and controlled through digital transformation. Everyone benefits — owner/landlord, operator, tenant and user.
As lockdowns start to ease in many countries, so the tentative return to work begins, leaving people understandably concerned about how safe a space an office will be in the middle of a global pandemic. There is likely to be an increase in the amount of technology used to monitor employees. From thermal cameras taking your temperature when you enter the building to apps or wearables to alert you if you get too close to colleagues, work could soon have the feel of the Minority Report movie.
Arguably the biggest challenge for hyperscalers is continuity and, by association, reliability. New findings generated by a survey from Uptime Institute revealed that over 10% of all respondents said their most recent reportable outage cost them more than $1m in direct and indirect costs. On March 13th, 2019, Facebook suffered its worst-ever outage, affecting the estimated 2.7 billion users of its core social network, Instagram and messaging applications, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp. By extrapolating the company’s 2018 revenue figures, CCN estimated that the blackout could have cost Facebook up to $90 million in lost revenue based on an income of $106,700 per minute. With so many businesses relying on hyperscale data centers to provide the IT backbone to their operations, any downtime can have a substantial impact and sometimes catastrophic ramifications.
Major cloud providers are having trouble getting basic components for new data centers so they’ve put off some construction plans, but they have enough surplus capacity already to ride out the problem. Limiting construction are a scarcity of fiber optics, batteries, and racks.
Researchers in South Korea have developed ultra-fast transmitting/receiving optical engine that can provide stable and improved data transfer speed for data centers. The new technology sends eight times as much data as conventional methods in each linecard/server. It is expected to contribute to solving data traffic congestion in data centers where the demand for fast data speed has increased due to high-definition video content and services using artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
Until recently, multimode transceivers were orders of magnitude less expensive than their single-mode counterparts, making multimode the fiber of choice for many enterprise network designers. Today, the cost of single-mode transceivers has come down significantly, making the increased bandwidth and longer distances made possible by single-mode fiber much more attractive. This presentation covers: Reasons to include single-mode fiber in the enterprise network; What you need as an IT Manager and what is expected as an installer; Choices and recommendations on fiber cabling, connectors, termination and migration options; and Cleaning, testing and maintenance to ensure system longevity and performance.
Join FOTC Standards Chair Cindy Montstream for LAN, Standards, News & Trends: 2020. During this webinar Cindy will review current and pending structured cabling standards from the TIA, IEEE and other standards bodies. Attendees will earn 1 BICSI CEC
When internet connectivity is accepted as a necessary part of building infrastructure, alongside electricity, water, and gas, it is known as the fourth utility. Just like with utilities, the first step in network infrastructure is conducting a physical site survey, and then determining different connectivity options. Utility-grade infrastructure can meet varying requirements for low- or high-bandwidth devices and applications and supports Wi-Fi as a backhaul service.
