2013 Australia - Cloud Computing, Data Centres and M2M

IT developments now dominating the telecoms world

The Cloud Computing Revolution

Cloud computing deployment and development is gaining momentum around the world as the true potential of this technology reveals itself. It has become one of the fastest-growing areas for the IT sector. In Australia cloud computing solutions are now being adopted by over 80% of enterprises and government institutions. Similar developments can be seen in the consumer market, with services offered by the digital media companies.

For enterprises the development of cloud computing takes the form of a business transition, and company strategies and policies need to be changed before its potential can be monetised by businesses. A key factor here is that organisations will have to lift ICT from the level of an infrastructure issue to that of a business opportunity. Cloud computing is a concept, not a technology and will need to be seen as a valuable business tool – one that will differentiate the company from others.

Cloud security and privacy are issues which require scrutiny and there are growing concerns about data ‘ownership’. The enormous financial benefits of cloud computing will see these concerns being overcome, along with the right standardisations and infrastructure put in place.

But to successfully implement cloud computing far more robust infrastructure is required than what is currently available. The NBN will provide the robust infrastructure needed for high-speed information processing, distributed computing, as well as many other applications that can be processed, analysed and managed – all in real time over a cloud-computer-based IT platform. Security will be crucial and far more attention needs to be given to ensure that these new large-scale developments are properly protected. This is of national importance.

So while cloud computing will have a golden future its implementation will be more gradual, over a large number of years.

The Changing Data Centre Landscape

The data centre market is an extremely complex one, consisting of many diverse aspects. There are literally millions of data centres worldwide and 99% of them are embedded in the IT operations of the organisations that generate and use that data. In 2013 there is a growing awareness of the ongoing maintenance and energy costs involved in the operation of data centres.

In late 2012 the introduction of Google Spanner changed the data centre landscape. With the focus on energy use and efficiency squarely focused on data centres in the IT sector there has been a growing discussion around the use of direct current (DC) power as opposed to alternate current (AC) power; With the enormous explosion in cloud computing and related OTT services secondary data centres are following a parallel trend to that of the large data centres.

The data centre market includes telehousing facilities, co-location facilities, cloud and IT services, content hosting, connectivity and interconnection. They are important for the new developments of cloud computing and the Internet of Things (M2M).

The NBN in Australia has given an enormous boost to the data centre market, with forward-looking investments worth $5 billion over the next 3-5 years. Currently the developments are highly centralised in the capital cities, but a more decentralised trend is expected to develop over time.

M2M and the Internet of Things

With the NBN and LTE now well and truly underway it is important to look at what the real value of this new infrastructure will be.

The infrastructure that is now being built offers a range of features such as ubiquitousness, affordability, low latency, high speed and high capacity. It will link millions of devices, such as sensors, that will enable us to more efficiently and effectively manage our environment, traffic, infrastructures, and our society as a whole.

This ‘Internet of Things’ – other names used include M2M, Pervasive Internet and Industrial Internet – is going to be a real game-changer. It will transform every single sector of society and the economy and it will be out of this environment that new businesses – and indeed new industries – will be born. This is one of the reasons so many overseas ICT companies are increasing their presence in Australia. The LTE will take a leadership role in the development of M2M but the NBN is also an ideal test-bed for such developments. As mentioned above, a great deal of attention is being paid to cloud computing and the NBN can be viewed as one gigantic cloud.

The number of connected M2M devices will grow to between 25 million and 50 million by 2020.

Data in this report is the latest available at the time of preparation and may not be for the current year