COVID-19, expansion, scaling, hyperscale, SMB
The COVID-19 outbreak continues to have a profound impact on Internet infrastructure services. Microsoft is throttling some of its most widely used services, while Google and Facebook both altered the video viewing experience to alleviate pressure on network traffic.
Hyperscale infrastructure was built to scale and demand for many services around collaboration, content delivery, unified communications and e-commerce, has skyrocketed. NextDC and operators that serve hyperscale will continue to build out capacity and confirmed in the past week more funding for expansion projects. This is still happening and demand may start to push the timelines ahead of schedule. But in the short-term, the outbreak will also start to slow the ecosystem down and the first area that might see this impact is data centre construction projects. In the past week, we saw Facebook confirm it has halted a few data centre projects and there are others that may follow. Supply chains and human resources are inevitably going to see some challenges and this is how it can and will manifest. The good news is that data centres have been classified as a critical and essential service in jurisdictions around the world. There is reason to believe delays and disruption can be managed.
It was a bit of a shorter week with the Easter long weekend, but there will some developments of note. On the SMB side, there was a transaction in Europe, while Linode rolled out an application marketplace. The hyperscale clouds continue to push forward and Google rolled out a new gaming server management tool, while Microsoft acquired Affirmed Networks as it looks to push its network and edge strategy.
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