Data centers serve as the underlying infrastructure for communications and these days there are more compute demands than ever before. The world has increasingly become data hungry and the demand for processing power, storage and the infrastructure to support it all is high.  Hardware is becoming smaller, faster, and designed to improve latencies so that it can keep up with the increases in bandwidth requirements. In addition, more and more organizations are moving workloads to the cloud. IDG’s Cloud Computing Survey reported that nine out of ten companies in 2019 are expected to have some of their applications or infrastructure in the cloud. This year, we will also start to see more multi-cloud deployments - so it’s not a choice of whether to use the cloud or not, but more about how many clouds to use and for what purposes. With all of these developments, there is still a need for a place to securely house the equipment, networks and the cloud infrastructure to support them. 
As a Los Angeles data center provider, West 7 Center offers secure colocation for organizations that require low latency connectivity - and has ample space to accommodate large footprints; a rarity in Los Angeles! West 7 Center is a carrier-neutral site with access to multiple telecom carriers and cloud service providers and can support an organization’s core operations or backup configurations.
Our highly reliable, Tier III data center has 348,000 sq. ft. of space across three underground floors and offers nine floors of above-ground office space.
 
​High Power. Highly Reliable:
·       22MW of total power, 16.9MW of Generator-backed power
·       Supported by two central plants with redundant backup power and cooling capacity
·       HVAC Plants are designed and operated to an N+1 redundancy
·       Ample fuel to support 120 hours of uninterrupted power at full load
·       24/7 on-site engineering and security support
 
Be sure to check out additional resources including:
 West 7 Center Guide: Not all Data Centers are Created Equally, How Secure is Your Data?

• Colocation in the City of Angels eBook – a deeper look at current and future market drivers that have propelled renewed interest in data centers and colocation facilities sited in Los Angeles, the digital gateway for global business. 
• Colocation for Business Continuity - learn more about back up options and how best to protect your critical data and workloads.

 
 

Every week, three million more people move to already bustling metropolitan areas, according to the International Organization for Migration. The United Nations predicts that, by 2050, the world’s urban population is likely to double. Those are important statistics because they answer the “why” behind the burgeoning smart city trend that’s cropping up around the world.
 
It’s a trend that JLL’s Executive Vice President, Darren Eades, explores in his recent Pipeline article, “Bright Lights, Smart City.” And it’s a trend that’s gaining steam fast. In two years, smart cities will become a $1.5 trillion global market, Frost & Sullivan says. A National League of Cities survey reports that two-thirds of U.S. cities are investing in smart city technology, while a quarter of those without any smart city systems are exploring future implementations. 
 
Smart cities will require an ecosystem that will develop in increments and rely upon layers of technology, some existing and some emerging. Let’s take a quick look at a few of those technologies. 

• The Internet of Things (IoT): Smart cities, by their very nature, generate enormous amounts of data, some of it static, but much of it high velocity, high volume and extremely heterogeneous in its sources. In other words, Big Data. The real-time data gathered in smart cities derives in large quantity from connected devices and sensors, in addition to streaming video and audio, log files, networks, web, transactional applications and social media.
• Edge Computing: Driven by a need to overcome cloud overhead in latency and bandwidth, and the demand for more local processing, edge computing is poised to enable billions of new IoT end-points, and real-time, localized Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) applications for autonomous systems. Edge computing allows smart applications and devices to respond to data almost instantaneously, which is critical for technologies such as self-driving cars.
• Next-Generation Wireless: The advent of next‐generation 5G wireless networking will be integral to meeting the needs of smart cities, which require gigabit-per-second throughputs to relay massive amounts of data among connected devices and systems in near-real time. Compared to current 4G LTE networks, 5G provides very high data rates, extremely low latency, an increase in base station capacity and significant improvement in quality of service (QoS).
• Colocation at the Edge: As smart cities grow in number and complexity, placing increasingly high demands on centralized cloud data centers, many industry experts believe that colocation facilities, especially those located in or within close proximity to major metro areas, will become their foundation.

 
That’s where West 7 Center comes in – we can serve the requirements of smart city IoT network and application environments, as well as their end users. The City of Los Angeles in the process of teaming up with several major carriers to help realize the ambition of making LA one of the smartest cities in America through improvements in traffic control, public safety, air quality and digital infrastructure. Colocation data centers located in the heart of LA (like West 7 Center) are needed to provide:

• Scalable capacity for future growth
• Resilient infrastructure to securely house critical data
• Low latency interconnectivity at the edge of the network

 
Learn more about smart cities and how West 7 Center is helping to transform LA by reading Darren Eades’ full article here. 
​