INTERVIEW
By Sam Darwish, Sales Manager
Telecoms, Microlease (Now part
of Electro Rent Corporation)
www.microlease.com
Microlease is an equipment service and distribution provider
to the test and measurement industry across Europe, Asia,
and the US. It helps clients deploy equipment when and
where needed in the most cost-effective manner via rental,
leasing, and asset management.
With over 40 years of experience, the company offers
independent and expert advice to help customers find exactly
the right solution for them, with equipment rental offering
fast and flexible access to the test equipment data centres
need with ongoing advice and support.
What have been the most significant changes to
the industry over the past five years?
We’ve witnessed a growth in the number of new data centres
looking for help with test and measurement. Then there
are existing data centres that are upgrading or expanding
their systems; it’s often the older data centres that are
moving from copper to fibre and need help with fibre testing
technology to ensure a smooth transition.
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What challenges do data centre managers face?
For new data centres, the challenge is to ensure every
element of their increasingly complex systems are functioning
correctly during installation and commissioning so they can
easily achieve certification.
Uptime is a key SLA for data centre managers and
maintaining good uptime rates is essential to maintain and
grow customers. A good operational testing strategy will help
ensure all systems are functioning reliably and efficiently to
protect uptime.
Power consumption is also a significant issue. It’s
important to identify where power consumption is higher
than necessary. This reduces energy costs and prevents
unnecessary additional heating effects where power
consumption is high.
For older data centres, there’s also a significant challenge
where they are moving from a copper-based architecture
to fibre. Upgraded systems need to be fully tested and data
centre staff might not have the expertise in fibre that’s
necessary for the upgrade.
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Solving the toughest technical and financial test
equipment challenges to ensure data centre managers
have the network overview they need
Where do you see the data centre industry
heading in the future?
Data transmission is growing all the time, whether it’s
mobile data through faster 5G networks or the vast volumes
of data produced by autonomous systems such as driverless
cars. So, we expect growth in the number of new data
centres, as well as the updating and renovation of existing
facilities.
Many data centre owners are expressing a desire to
obtain more of their power from renewable energy sources
to help them and their customers meet their environmental
goals. Demand for cloud processing and edge computing is
also growing, and this will drive a more distributed network
of smaller data centres cable of offering the ultra-low
latency required for cloud processing.
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What will be the market drivers for the future?
With the growth of IoT and the number of devices
relying on cloud processing and storage increase, demand
for data centre storage and computing power is likely
to continue to accelerate. New technology will drive up
bandwidth and reduce latency. Data centre managers will
be under pressure to deliver even better uptime, especially
for mission-critical applications such as autonomous
vehicles. Larger data centres will be required to achieve the
economies of scale for customers who need to reduce costs
but at the same time smaller, more distributed data centres
will be needed to serve ultra-low latency needs of some
applications.
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What lies ahead for Microlease/Electro Rent?
We’re always looking ahead to ensure that we have the
equipment and product knowledge to support the industry.
Our inventory is constantly refreshed to make sure we can
offer our customers the best the market has to offer while
maintaining legacy equipment so we can continue serving
older installations. We also work to make sure our customers
have the knowledge they need to use equipment they may
not have used before, for example using thermal imaging
cameras for heat-mapping, to find hotspots and faults. n
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