Rosemary McGlashon, European technical manager, 3M explains that choosing the right (or wrong) cable will affect the data centre for years to come

Most cabling companies are installing standard enterprise/office cabling products into data centres - leading to congested cabinets, cableways, impeded airflows and excessive use of expensive floor space for patching frames. Is it time for a total rethink and specialist datacentre cabling products specifically designed for the space and cooling constraints of datacentres? Ken Hodge, technical manager at Brand-Rex says a decided yes and describes a completely new approach.

Matthew Gingell is the business development director for MLL Telecom, and has spent over 20 years in the telecommunications industry, including at BT, Equant and data centre company Telecity. Here he looks at the neglected first mile of data centre connectivity

IT managers are turning towards automatically switched optical networks to unite their infrastructures and meet the demand of new bandwidth-intensive applications. Dieter Will of ADVA Optical Networking (below) explores the current network landscape and assesses the technologies that are revolutionising the telecommunications industry

Connectix tells Data Centre Management that is more than one way of skinning the cabling cat

Has structured cabling finally become too complex for a mix ‘n’ match approach? Paul Eo, regional manager Europe for LS argues that it has – and explains why it is time for a more simple solution.

Tony Henderson, operations director, Bailey Teswaine tells Data Centre Management that there are a number of checks that you must complete before deciding on your cable installer

Mike Bailey of Ipanema tells DCM about the options for wide area network (WAN) operations