Arun Kumar Shrivastav
Data centers are critical to any business from SMEs to large firms. They store all the data that an enterprise generates and process it. The speed, efficiency, and reliability at which these critical IT infrastructures work have made them indispensable to businesses that needed to process the data and store it – something that virtually all businesses need to do today.
All this was normal till a few years ago. Today, technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Internet of Things (IoT), Sensors, and 5G connectivity have become commonplace. This has increased the demand for bandwidth, storage capacity, and hardware that can efficiently manage the data being generated by these technologies and devices run by them.
Can individual businesses afford to have data centers, especially the kind of data centers they need? Alternatives to traditional data centers are already in the market. In this blog post, I am going to discuss how the concept of the data center is in for a change in the face of challenges that new technologies have brought.
Shift from traditional data center to cloud and collocation
Businesses shifting from traditional data centers and cloud becoming the new hotspot for data storage and processing is already here. Building a brand new data center is no more the first option. Businesses have the option to colocate it or use public, private, and hybrid cloud for the purpose.
Global research firm Gartner says 80% of businesses will close down their traditional data center by 2025 while 10% have already done so. Those who are maintaining their data centers are reluctant to invest in upgrading them. The IT spend of companies on data centers has reduced over the last few years. Colocation, where companies hire data center facilities, has become popular.
The 5G hyper-connectivity has enabled businesses to expand the networks and move to edge computing. This means deputing a size-appropriate data center to a specific geographic location.
But traditional data centers are still relevant
However, on-premise data centers are still being used for operations that are critical to the business and where greater control is needed. But there are significant technological advances that demand that data centers need to be re-imagined to the changing technological landscape. But there are some apparent bottlenecks that may hamper the progress of data centers to transform to the next level. Important among them include:
• Neglect of data center upgrade
• Infrastructure bottlenecks
• Staffing challenges due to brain drain
The data centers were imagined when technologies like 5G, AI, VR, and Sensors were either not available or were in infancy. Today, these technologies are critical to IT-enabled services, and they are driving growth across different industrial sectors.
Need for a new strategy for traditional data centers
But despite recent technological advances, data centers do not seem to be interested in upgrading themselves. Most business leaders think that the data centers available today do not have sufficiently upgraded infrastructure. The need for bandwidth is extremely at a time when the use of 5G, AI, VR, Sensors is commonplace. For data centers to stay relevant, they need to augment the bandwidth available to them. They also need to invest in hardware and upgrade the data center infrastructure.
In short, data centers need to evolve a new strategy to meet the challenges they are facing.
What do the future data centers look like?
The future data centers would need to proportionately more processing power across all levels of operations – local, cloud, and the edge. This alone can meet the challenges related to bandwidth and security. The future belongs to data centers with faster processing power. Local data centers alone may not be able to meet the multiple goals that they are expected to fulfill. A decentralized data center can be the answer. For example, data processing needs to be moved to the edge, close to the demographics it is supposed to serve.
Shifting of focus and resources can be part of this approach. The demand for faster data processing is making it necessary for enterprises to process the data right at the source or as close to it as possible.
Managing a decentralized data center
Cloud-based services are increasingly replacing traditional data center functions. The need for local and centralized data centers is on the decline, but they are far from becoming completely irrelevant. Enterprises are now using more and more public, private, and hybrid cloud for their data center functions. With 5G hyper-connectivity, even edge devices are becoming more useful as data centers.
Final thoughts
Data centers need to upgrade to stay relevant in the changing technological landscape where higher bandwidth, higher storage capacity, and faster processing power rules the game. Since this involves significant capital investment and recurring expenditure on maintenance, businesses are opting for colocation and cloud-based services. These new areas are leading the transformation and growth of data centers.