Skeleton's Lead Application Engineer Ludovico Barro explores the sophistication of data centers and discusses the role of high-power energy storage in keeping these vital, yet power-hungry structures running 24/7 without interruption.
Between the late 1960s and early 1970s, the foundation for one of humankind's most influential inventions, the Internet, was laid. Its initial incarnation was rudimentary and slow, a far cry from the seamless connectivity we're accustomed to today. Yet, it was undeniably a game-changer. Early users could communicate and share information in digital format, albeit slowly.
Fast forward to the late 20th and early 21st centuries, data storage and computing underwent a significant transformation with the emergence of servers. These machines centralized data storage and computing on dedicated hardware, independent of user proximity. The widespread adoption of broadband internet access in the 2010s further catalyzed this shift.
AWS (Amazon Web Services) played a pivotal role in popularizing a new concept: cloud storage. Suddenly, our favorite photos and music weren't just stored on our physical devices, but in a intangible realm we affectionately dubbed "the cloud".
Yet, "the cloud" isn't a mystical place in the sky. It's a tangible reality rooted in massive computers that operate tirelessly, day and night, often far away from end-users. Data centers have become integral to our digital lives. Every Facebook check, online news article, or query on Google and to Siri taps into terabytes of data housed in these faraway, yet swiftly accessible, repositories.
