The biggest data center design engineering and technology shifts may not be taking place at the hyperscale cloud core end the industry, but instead at much smaller scale much closer to where data of all types is both being created (smart IoT sensors) and consumed (smart mobile devices).

Schneider Electric's senior director for edge, Thomas Humphrey, who will lead the Edge Roundtables conversation, says, "With more connected users and more applications, the demand for data continues to grow more critical. Network bandwidth and latency issues are driving the need for solutions at the local edge-outside the core data center and closer to the processing.

"IT professionals face both enormous challenges and significant opportunities; and they need reliable solutions and service providers who will ensure secure, always-on availability at the edge to navigate digital transformation that enhances customer experience, security and operational optimization."

Three roundtables sessions will cover the current IT infrastructure stack requirements and capabilities for edge compute. The second covers the physical facilities stack - the special power and cooling design requirements at the edge. And a third talks about demand-side edge future and rapidly and newly arriving technologies for this new class of data center.

"All of what we understand to be digital transformation happens at the network edge from a data center infrastructure perspective," says Bruce Taylor, DCD conference chair. "That's what makes this topic so important and timely."

IBM SoftLayer to keynote

The digital factory of the future - data center-as-a-service - is as likely to be provided by colo investors, developers and cloud service providers as by the megascale CSPs. One of those providers, SoftLayer COO Francisco Romero shares IBM's experience gained to date in designing and delivering infrastructure-as-a-service offerings to enterprise customers.

Salesforce on climate change

Patrick Flynn, senior director of sustainability, and Lance Smith, senior director of technical programs at the internet, social/mobile and cloud CRM giant say that the data center industry needs to take the lead on carbon-neutral cloud.

"Climate change impacts everyone - every individual, company, and nation," says Flynn, "And its effects are compounded in the world's poorest regions, further amplifying global inequality. As a cloud leader, we, at Salesforce, have a responsibility to help combat the adverse effects of climate change." Flynn and Smith will detail how Salesforce has now begun delivering a carbon-neutral cloud.

Visit the website for more information. If you'd like to attend the DCD>Edge pre-conference Leadership Roundtables day and DCD>Colo + Cloud, you can register here.