Q&A with TelecomNewsRoom’s Contributing Editor, Kathy Xu
Honoré du Puy, founding partner of ICTroom, has a unique background in telecom and the European data center sector. Honoré previously held sales positions at KPN and COLT, and was managing director at the European start-up Interxion. In 2001, with Sander Nieuwmeijer, he co-founded ICTroom, which designs, builds, operates and maintains highly reliable data centers.
Honoré will be among the speakers at KickStart Europe 2018, which takes place on January 24, in Amsterdam. We recently had the opportunity to chat with him about the trends he foresees for the coming year, particularly how the growth of IoT will impact the data center.
TelecomNewsRoom, Kathy Xu (TNR-KX) Question: What are you most eager to share with attendees at KickStart Europe 2018 and to learn from fellow speakers?
ICTroom, Honoré du Puy (ICTroom-HP) Answer: I’m personally very excited about seeing Edge technology and IoT advancing in the data center landscape. Without a doubt, this development will have an even bigger impact on how we will design and build data center infrastructure than we can foresee now. Predictions are that smaller, more distributed data centers will be the norm in IoT infrastructure. In no way will IoT requirements remain static, so flexibility and scalability are key.
Data processed or stored in multiple distributed mini data centers at the network’s edge requires data centers that can quickly expand and adapt. At ICTroom, we are not only keen to share our vision on how to design a multi-site infrastructure that will meet IoT needs, but on this particular topic, we are also looking forward to learn from the industry that will be assembled in Amsterdam for this exciting conference. I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to mix and mingle, form new relationships, and strengthen existing ones. Of course, in our digital world I’m globally connected to partners and customers, however, there’s no substitution for meeting someone in real life.
TNR-KX Q: What shifts in the market are you expecting to see in 2018? What can we do now to prepare?
ICTroom-HP A: The Internet of Things will force the suppliers in the data center industry to adapt to the way customers want to deploy capacity. IoT devices will generate massive amounts of data that need to be processed and analyzed in real time. For data center networks, IoT will mean a lot more incoming traffic due to the fact that IoT is more about data collection and less about data distribution. We expect more data to be flowing into data centers than flowing out of them. Also, most of IoT data collection devices will live outside of the data center so it’s crucial that the connections between devices and the data center are reliable and secure all the way. Of course, a lot more data will mean a lot more storage will have to be available in data centers. Since IoT devices will be collecting and transmitting data into the data center, storage space will have to increase.
TNR-KX Q: KickStart Europe’s focus is on increasing collaboration across industry subsets to further develop the industry as a whole. What does that mean to you and what are you doing to help realize that goal?
ICTroom-HP A: The chain is as strong as the weakest link and that also applies to the data center industry, of course. In our 17 years in business we’ve always been bridging the gap between IT and data center facility infrastructure, and have built partnerships throughout the various layers of the digital economy. We will keep doing that in order to constantly align our portfolio with industry developments. Very important for us will be to continue discussions with industry business executives. They drive demand for our technology solutions.
TNR-KX: Thank you for being so generous with your time today. Best wishes at KickStart Europe! To learn more about ICTroom, click here.
