Apple plans to merge its data centers with high-speed network



    With the growing popularity of Apple products, including both mobile devices and services, the load on the company's data centers is also constantly increasing. Now the company depends on traditional providers and equipment suppliers in terms of support for iTunes, iCloud, Siri and others. At the same time, the corporation plans to expand its data centers, increasing their productivity, as well as integrate these objects using a high-speed network.

    The main task in this case is the creation of an advanced cloud infrastructure. Apple is going to invest billions of dollars in this project, while last year $ 1 billion was spent on expanding existing and creating new data centers. What are the intermediate steps to be taken during the implementation of such a large-scale project?

    Internet Services




    Accelerating content delivery to consumers by creating a high-speed network that will unite the company's US data centers is one of the main stages. Apple hopes to deliver content on its own, at least in some regions, eliminating the need to work with intermediary providers.

    The largest Apple data centers are now located in California, Nevada, Northern California and Oregon. The corporation is now looking for the opportunity to transfer data at a speed of hundreds of gigabits per second over the fiber between these objects using its own solutions.

    All in the home


    Analyst company Raymond James Financial Inc. recently introduced information about the results of Apple in the development of its own network infrastructure. So, Apple has been rebuilding its own data centers for the past five years, and now the company needs the production structure more than ever before.

    Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook Inc. they also spend billions of dollars to create new types of network equipment for data centers and the data centers themselves. Apple is also involved in many of these projects, all with the same goal - to maximize the performance of its services and software solutions.

    According to the head of the Open Compute Project Foundation, Frank Frankowski, all telecommunications giants would like to become the central object of the modern digital world. But in this case, companies have to equalize the costs of deploying their infrastructure in order to be competitive.

    Data centers


    Previously, Apple data centers were filled with equipment manufactured by Hewlett-Packard Co., Cisco Systems Inc., NetApp Inc. Over the past two years, the corporation has been negotiating with some technology companies, planning to involve them in the development of its own solutions. In March, Apple joined the Open Compute Project, which allows it to begin work on such solutions based on project standards.



    The goal is not to replace all equipment in existing data centers. The main task of the corporation is to install equipment developed independently in data centers designed by its own engineers. Earlier this year, Apple announced plans to invest about $ 3.9 billion in new facilities in Arizona, Ireland and Denmark.

    Content Delivery


    Apple earned about 9.9% last year from sales on iTunes and other services. This is a fairly substantial share of the company's revenue, so Apple plans to improve the content delivery process.

    To this end, the company is exploring the possibility of combining its data centers and network infrastructure into a single high-performance automated system. Facebook, which was able to create a similar infrastructure, saved about $ 2 billion through such automation. The company's servers are activated upon request , especially those that operate as a cold storage system.

    Experts believe that Apple is taking the right steps towards the development of its own powerful cloud infrastructure. “If you use someone’s networks and daat centers, you cannot control everything. It’s unlikely that you can call Amazon and say that the company has tripled its bandwidth on Friday night to deliver your content, ”said Steve Harrison, vice president of marketing for Pica8 Inc.

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