Possible Partnership with Kenyan Telcos and Data Centers: Ai

Telecommunications and data centre providers around the world, especially in Africa, face increasing challenges in meeting the demands driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and the rapidly changing technology landscape, which is impacting their infrastructure and services.

This is according to Sales Director for Strategic Telecom Clients in EMEA, Jon Abbott, at Vertiv, a global provider of critical digital infrastructure and continuity solutions, who recently addressed Kenyan leaders in the local telco, tower, and colocation arena in Nairobi. Abbott shared insights into the operational and technology changes that are set to reshape the entire communications networks landscape by 2030.

According to the 2023 Digital Quality of Life Index, a study on digital wellbeing across 92 percent of the world’s population, Kenya, which is ranked 76th overall out of 121 countries globally and 3rd out of 25 African countries across pillars that impact a population’s digital quality of life, drops to 82nd overall in terms of its AI readiness.

“The challenge for Kenya is that AI adoption is already transforming the IT stack and our IT infrastructures. This means that accelerated architectures are needed to meet the requirements of AI workloads.” says Abbott

He points out that the necessary tangible network developments will involve operational adjustments that consumers may not see. These changes are likely to include shifts in network ownership and increased service costs, driven primarily by the growing demands for energy consumption as intelligent connectivity expands.

“This will place a greater emphasis on efficiency, while more attention will also have to be paid to sustainability and emission reduction,” Abbott explains

At the same time, significant technological changes are expected, including a greater shift towards edge computing. This will drive increased collaboration among major tech companies and greater standardization across both physical and logical infrastructure—an intricate task. We can also anticipate the rise of open-source groups and commoditized hardware, with data processing capabilities integrated into the network fabric, and the development of new ecosystems featuring more private networks.

“Then there’s the Internet of Things (IoT), which has the potential to unlock insights and efficiencies across all sectors. The way this will evolve will be to propagate the landscape with processing capability, breaking the facility down into smaller and smaller localised facilities,” he continues

What will this mean for data centres?

According to Abbott, data centers as we know them today will not disappear. Instead, they will continue to expand, while simultaneously, more smaller “edge” data centers will emerge. These edge data centers will have the same fundamental physical requirements as their larger counterparts—remaining operational at all times, avoiding excessive heat (which will strain cooling systems), and striving to operate as efficiently and securely as possible.

“The challenges all this poses in terms of energy provision, particularly in the face of energy transition and sustainability requirements to meet the 2030 global emissions reduction goals, will be considerable.” he says