AI is a megatrend that no one can afford to ignore.
That’s according to Paul Alexander, head of cloud infrastructure business Europe, Nokia, who said that many cloud providers were already capitalising on the technology by building the infrastructure needed to support it.
But he warned that anyone who doesn’t tap into the potential opportunity risks getting left behind.
Alexander said that AI has been the biggest gamechanger for cloud infrastructure to date. He said that companies have already been investing trillions of pounds into building the infrastructure required to underpin the technology.
While the cloud compute technology is being built to support it, Alexander said that the next step is to develop the applications and services that go on top of that. That will be what generates the traffic on the networks, he said.
“Everyone’s talking about AI,” said Alexander. “But we’re still very much at the first rung of the ladder – network providers are looking at what they need to do to get their networks ready, whether that’s building additional capacity or in different locations.”
AI is also being used as an enabler to open up a host of socioeconomic opportunities, said Alexander. Chief among them, he said, is improving connectivity for businesses and communities, particularly in remote and hard-to-reach rural areas.
Regulatory opportunity
Now that the UK has left the European Union, Alexander also believes that there’s a big opportunity to improve the regulatory set-up here in order to attract more businesses to invest and build here. He said that the new government can drive that by making the changes needed to foster a more business-friendly environment.
Another key trend that Alexander has seen is a steady increase in data centres being moved from Tier 1 cities to Tier 2 cities to deal with the problem of power consumption. He said that some have been relocated to the Nordics, where the milder air can be used to cool the data centres, while others have been moved to places such as Spain, where solar power can be used to run them more cost effectively.
“There’s no more power capacity in many of these Tier 1 cities, so data centre providers are increasingly turning to these alternative locations,” said Alexander. “With demand outstripping supply, that means many companies are looking to move their data centres elsewhere, where it’s more economically and environmentally sustainable.”
But Alexander said that the location of data centres is also determined by land availability and whether the provider has or can secure a permit to build it. That’s not to mention the amount of time spent planning to build them, he said.