The data economy can be described as volatile even at the best of times.
Inspur asserts that it understands this. After an urgent request from service provider Baidu, Inspur delivered a shipment of rack scale servers of more than 10,000 nodes to the Baidu Beijing Shunyi data center, equating to one server delivered every 2.88 seconds, which Inspur asserts is a new record.
The Baidu data center in question was built last year with the capacity to host hundreds of thousands of servers. The number of Baidu Cloud users and partners skyrocketed increased by three times, traffic by five times, and revenues by four times.
The company says for internet service providers in general, business growth is rapid and unpredictable, with unexpected surges in access traffic occurring frequently. This heightens the need to improve the scalability of infrastructure by adopting technologies like cloud computing and improving business processes to strengthen the supply chain.
Baidu and Inspur have been working together for a significant amount of time – as early as 2012 the duo were using rack scale deployments of 10-40 node increments instead of a single node.
Meanwhile, the delivery and deployment model Inspur adopted for Baidu's data center was upgraded to L11 (Rack Level Integration), increasing delivery efficiency more than 20 times.
Moreover, formerly on-site deployment processes including assembly, debugging, and strong and weak power cabling of the rack were completed during manufacturing, further simplifying on-site deployment.
Inspur says in order to maintain rapid deliveries it needs to invest in business processes like production, transportation, and qualifications to ensure it remains agile and efficient.
“For example, to address the logistical challenges of transporting a 2.1 meter tall, 1.2 ton rack without incurring damage, Inspur leveraged IoT and mobile technology to develop a route spectrum test to assess each freight line in advance, with intelligent terminals on each product to monitor transport conditions in real time,” the company says.
Inspur recently introduced its Joint Design Manufacturing (JDM) methodology that it has been working with cloud service providers (CSPs) to develop in order to explore various operating models suitable for today's intelligent computing era.
“JDM is an agile business model based around deep collaboration between Inspur and the client throughout the product life cycle – demand, R-D, procurement, quality control, production, delivery, and service – to enable the fastest product turnaround and greatest compliance to users' personalized demands,” Inspur says.
“Inspur's vast experience in serving CSPs and deep understanding of customer application scenarios are augmented by a willingness to share technology innovations and co-design customized solutions through JDM to identify and meet precise customer needs.
The new product development cycle from R-D to manufacturing takes nine months with the customer able to request a prototype to be delivered within three months.