What Changes Will 5G and AI Bring to Data Centers?

According to the latest report released by Guanyan Tianxia, driven by the booming development of internet sub-sectors such as mobile internet, the Internet of Things, and big data, the growth rate of China's data center market has been significantly higher than the global average, achieving a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 37.8% over the past five years. Looking ahead to the next five years, the scale of China's IDC (Internet Data Center) market will continue to climb. It is expected that within the next three years, China's newly added data center market capacity will account for about 50% of the global new additions, and by 2024, China's market capacity will reach the scale of the existing market in the United States.

With the arrival of 2024, data centers are accelerating their adoption of more advanced and mature technology architectures. On the one hand, the growth of edge computing demand driven by 5G networks will play a significant promoting role; on the other hand, artificial intelligence (AI) technology will further accelerate in this market, providing stronger support for deploying new services for end users and internal employees. The deployment of machine learning, deep learning, and other AI technologies has gradually become mainstream, and it is precisely these technologies that power the cloud services we use every day.

As more and more enterprises begin to leverage their accumulated data to build and deploy AI models—in order to support the launch of new services and uncover new business insights—the application of AI in data centers is expected to accelerate further in 2024. In the face of this trend, data center enterprises need to respond proactively: while deploying higher-speed network and server infrastructure at core locations, they must also position AI model inference capabilities at the edge—that is, closer to end users.

Although the deployment of AI technology in data centers brings considerable challenges to enterprises, it simultaneously nurtures broad opportunities: if companies can effectively integrate and coordinate network, computing, and edge data center technologies to fully support the operation of AI applications, they will be expected to attract more customers and secure a favorable position in the fiercely competitive market.