By Dustin Boyette, EnerSys
Today, critical communications facilities are largely managed manually. While some facilities (headends, primaries, data centers) may have fairly extensive monitoring, the data provided still tends to end up on a 2D “dashboard” for humans to interpret and act upon as necessary. Some facilities–especially remote hubs–may have very little telemetry at all.
This paper introduces big data then presents it as key to enabling advanced management of critical facilities (CF) in the future. The importance of collecting broad and deep data–starting today–is discussed along with extant and future sources of this data from facility infrastructure. Common challenges of contemporary facility management will also be discussed in the context of how big data can help reduce the human burden posed by those challenges. Several example use cases enabled by big data–when combined with modeling, visualization, and artificial intelligence–will be presented.