On the occasion of the Data Centre World in Paris (November 2022), a look back at FOLAN’s support for the data centre market.
Energy, transport, environment and security are the 4 axes on which the Smart city is developing. It works through sensors, connected objects generating data that are stored, analysed and processed via servers located in data centres. The aim? To make the city as intelligent as possible.
Examples of this are:
Telemedicine since the health crisis
The uses of the autonomous car
Connected agriculture with humidity sensors
What is a data centre?
Data centres are physical, secure places that contain computer servers. They are the nerve centre of digital services: without a data centre, there is no Internet… There are different categories:Hyperscale, with a very large surface areaColocation data centres, which host company serversPrivate data centresA new category has recently emerged, the Edge Data Centre, with a smaller surface area. They allow us to respond to the increase in the amount of data generated and must be located as close as possible to where the data is generated, i.e. in medium-sized cities.The objective is to gain in latency for the analysis, processing and storage of data. This is the prerogative of operators and local authorities.
FOLAN’s support
Historically, FOLAN is present on all networks (FTTH, FTTO, FTTA) but also on the Smart city part, notably with video protection or 4G. The communication medium remains the same, namely fibre, which is FOLAN’s core business.
Our know-how has enabled us to develop products adapted to the data centre market with cables that meet the RPC standard or high density drawers.
Future and evolution of data centres
The data centre market is constantly evolving, particularly in terms of trying to reduce the carbon footprint. This involves optimising cooling, high density in terms of compactness of cables and connectors, etc.
On the technical side, FOLAN supports this need for high density with a recently launched 96FO high density drawer. This type of product also makes it possible to meet the needs of Edge Data Centres which, because of their small surface area, require a higher density of cabling.
The arrival of 5G opens up new perspectives to be defined: smart for communities, industry 4.0 for companies, and more broadly the increasing digitalisation of society.
