The telecommunications infrastructure has experienced an extraordinary direct increase in traffic during these months of lockdown.
In this sense, data centers play a very important role in network stability, both in public institutions and in other companies. So much so that they obtained critical infrastructure status from the government during COVID-19 in somme countries.
In order to get an idea of the value of the information managed by the general state administration, we can highlight the data contained in the chips of the electronic ID cards, Treasury and tax data files, Social Security, health or judicial files, among others, all of them are hosted in data centers.
In short, data centers play a crucial role in the information society and much more so in crisis situations such as the one we are experiencing. In the case of public bodies, for example, if they are stopped, many of the activities of hospitals, banks, reservation systems, airlines and most of our mobile applications will also cease. These are just a few examples to show the importance of data centers in situations of this type.
Behind every piece of data, message or information there is a data center
Data centers are the node where the vast majority of Internet connections end up. Basically, the point where every WhatsApp message, every online store purchase, or even where popular series on the main streaming platforms are stored. They are also the nucleus of the services used in teleworking which is so widespread today.
Behind every piece of data there is a complex infrastructure that supports it, even if we are not aware of it. When the information leaves our smartphones, it begins its journey through the mobile network to find the nearest antennas. From this antenna, and through cable, it connects to the nearest backbone. If the message reaches the terrestrial limit of the network, it will continue its journey through an underwater cable. Its target: the data center where the server is hosted.
It is important to know that behind every piece of data sent by WhatsApp, there is a data center that is constantly running so that your information and connectivity does not stop. These facilities are the technological foundation for everything from financial transactions to content distribution and are critical to the digital transformation of businesses.
In this context, data centers are responsible for storing and processing all the information that travels through the network. The more than 30 million messages that are sent every second through applications like WhatsApp are processed and stored here, crossing oceans, continents and borders, and all in milliseconds.
The digital infrastructure of a country is therefore made up of the telecommunications network, the power grid, Internet exchange points and the data centers. None of them can be developed without the others. A curious fact to keep in mind is that 99% of the network traffic at some point runs on cables, both buried and underwater, that connect to the data centers.
From this, it is possible to understand the importance of data centers for companies, since in addition to being the physical space where all the information that is handled daily is concentrated, they make possible most of the online services and applications that we use.
