What is the future for the data centre? At a time when more and more IT activity is moving to the cloud and managed services are the order of the day, this might seem like an odd question. But the fact of the matter is that the data centre is changing in form, and a new definition of the concept is needed.
Gartner has predicted that by 2020, more compute power will be sold by service providers than will be sold and deployed in enterprise data centres.
In a recent publication titled ‘Top 10 Technology Trends Impacting Infrastructure and Operations’, it went on to say that while most enterprises, unless very small, will continue to have an on-site (or hosted) data centre capability, companies need to focus on managing and leveraging the hybrid combination of on-premises, off-premises, cloud and non-cloud architectures.
So, will this tipping point towards the cloud signal the death knell of the traditional data centre, and what would that transition mean for Irish organisations?
Data centre identity
“There is a sort of shift taking place in the understanding of what a data centre is, where it lives and what it does. Gartner is very much looking at what it describes as a shift away from what’s called the corporate data centre, which is really a server room in the enterprise’s business premise,” said Rory Murphy, senior director for field development at Equinix.
“But what’s happened is that the need for that server room, that on-site data centre, is shifting. We’re in the business of co-location so we’re a classic multi-tenant data centre, and that’s where a lot of companies are moving to, precisely because having everything on site is inefficient.”
With cloud technology now essentially removing or diminishing the need for private companies to maintain their own servers and infrastructure, companies increasingly are faced with a choice.
“What do they do? Do they build their own data centre, which is an expensive thing these days to do, or do they outsource it? Do they go to a company like Equinix where we’re best of breed and a global provider in 145 or more countries around the world? If they do that, then their decisions become more about strategy than logistics,” said Murphy.
“Companies like us offer the ability to connect to clients, customers, partners and as many networks as they’d like to. That’s the shift from the old style of on-site corporate data centre, moving to using outsourced suppliers like us which can provide data centre services and access to the cloud.”
For an entire generation of IT professionals, accessing infrastructure, compute power and storage is increasingly a matter of opening a web browser and using a credit card rather than provisioning a computer room.
Developed market
“These kinds of abilities are offered by Amazon Web Services and of course Microsoft, IBM, Google and many, many more depending on what you need. The market has developed this way and it’s only going to continue in this vein,” Murphy said. “The question the industry is asking is increasingly ‘what kind of cloud services do companies want to consume?’, and not how will they do it?”
Murphy recognises that for many companies, a hybrid solution offers the best return on investment, straddling as it does the many demands that firms are under pressure to get from the technology they already own, as well as their data security requirements, their risk appetite and other factors.
“The hybrid model is when companies simultaneously adopt a public cloud and a private cloud capability, so they use the services of Amazon or Azure plus they’ll have their own private capability. That’s where companies like Equinix come in because we offer the facility for them to deploy their servers in our location,” said Murphy.
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