Client needs, as much as cloud-based innovations, are guiding the recent leaps and bounds in the data centre space. While many experts factored in the cloud as being the most influential catalyst for change in this area, Datapac’s John Sheridan, was one of many who also said that "data centre offerings have changed in line with customer requirements" over the past year.
The company’s cloud services development manager said, "It’s our belief that it is the market place that is dictating what service providers need to offer. Historically, the data centre business model was to price in accordance with physical space requirements. With the advent of server virtualisation, greater storage requirements and private cloud needs, the data centre has had to adjust its model."
PRIVATE CLOUD
Fraser Kyne, technology specialist for the UK, Ireland and South African region with Citrix Systems told ComputerScope that the data centre industry has seen a "surge in interest in private cloud" during the past year. He attributes this to organisations wanting to get the agility and cost-saving benefits of cloud computing while keeping close control of operations and data.
Continued Kyne, "More recently people are realising that this isn’t just about adding a few application program interfaces (APIs) to their existing server virtualisation platforms: it’s much more than that. There’s a real focus now on building private clouds that look like real public clouds-which are architecturally very different to corporate data centres."
Noting that "externally, providers have got smarter" about hosting private clouds, Kyne also said that this has led them to offering public cloud options from the same data centre. "Service providers have also realised that they have to differentiate on more than just price, so we’ve started to see extremely focused value add offerings-vertically aligned for example. Some will call this ‘community cloud’, and no doubt we’ll be inundated with new terms that are subtle flavours of what we’ve seen before in the near future," he added.
PAY-AS-YOU-GO
The introduction of pay-as-you-go (PAYG) services based on leading virtualisation solutions was pinpointed by Triangle’s IT director, Richard O’Brien as being a major success in the last 12 months.
According to O’Brien, this model provides customers with "an easy to understand model, based on technologies they are most likely already running internally". PAYG, he contended, quickly allows a customer to understand the positives and negatives associated with a service, while "maintaining the ability to transition services back onsite if required".
Senior manager with Hewlett Packard in Galway, Chris Coughlan believes that O’Brien has a point. "The pay-per use or subscription model will find more users as we move along," he said, adding that "everything as a service will be the real thing to watch out for though". Continued Coughlan, "There are already more companies open to putting things in the data centre and more people will begin to access them, not necessarily everyone will do that on a pay-per-use basis, but some will. They’ll probably be very specific in using them for specific elements of their business."
On a final point regarding the PAYG model, O’Brien added that for those who do take up the option, this will lead to "the ability to ‘flex’ in and out of Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) when needed, with minimal commitment and clear cost visibility". A common platform between both the internal and external service lowers the risk, and opens the opportunity to move between providers if required, he added.
FLEXIBLE & SCALABLE
Asked about how the data centre landscape has altered in the recent past, Interxion’s Tanya Duncan commented that, "With the growth of cloud computing, the need for flexible, scalable space and efficient power is essential, but this is also true for most industries coming to a data centre provider". The Interxion MD added that data centres must now work with their clients to develop a core infrastructure to suit their current and future needs.
Duncan also makes the point that by over-estimating their usage, companies run the risk of having too much IT equipment, storage and power, often running inefficiently. However, by working with a data centre provider, clients can safely estimate current usage versus potential growth and/or downtime to ensure the maximum effectiveness of your IT equipment.
"With cloud offerings your data centre provider not only has to ensure that your cloud platform is accessible and secure 24x7x365," said Duncan, "but they must also provide the resiliency needed to supply an ‘always available’ service." Duncan also said that this, together with the development of dedicated ‘cloud hubs’ within data centre communities, reduces latency to end users. "Thus data centres can ensure the maximum uptime of your equipment with industry leading redundancy, resilience and security," Duncan added.
EMC’s Graham Stevenson echoed much of what Duncan had said, adding that improved hypervisors now affect how data is stored, shared and provided. "There are now products which will allow us to move large amounts of data and basically make the info follow the user, which has always been difficult up until now. It’ll be providing disaster recovery sure, but it’ll provide proper mobility. If you login in Dublin, Singapore or New York you’re info is there, it’s local to you and you’re using the most up to date version."
Datapac’s Sheridan meanwhile added that disaster recovery and business continuity services are also an area of rapid growth in the last year. "The growth in these areas," he continued, "is being driven mainly by compliance as companies cannot comply without having a real disaster recovery and business continuity plan in place. Locating failover infrastructure in a data centre is the first step in this process."
ACCELERATE
Kevin Hickey, hosting manager with Digiweb expects consistent development to affect the data centre space over the next 18 months. Hickey claimed that," You’ll see a lot more data centres adopting virtualisation strategies for customers and internally to free up valuable space, reduce costs for energy and administration."
Along with a maturing of the current cloud offerings and expansion of existing data centre facilities to cater for the increased demand for cloud services Hickey also felt we’ll see an increase in the "promotion and demand for Desktop as a Service". This, he contended, "will allow companies to buy very cheap terminals instead of desktops and laptops", and have their staff access all the software they require from the cloud.
Added Hickey, "You will also see an increased amount of ‘cloud stack’ mergers and acquisitions as well as more clearly-defined niche or market specific clouds coming to the fore. Also, you’ll see a lot of data centres adopting greener strategies such as free-cooling or aisle containment for instance," he added.
Also looking towards the coming year to 18 months was Noel O’Grady, sales and marketing director with Fort Technologies. He told ComputerScope that the big move in that time period will be how the shift from dedicated to virtual platforms "will accelerate with more data centres offering IaaS service platforms, run on standard hypervisors such as VMware, Xen/KVM and Hyper-V".
O’Grady said that increasingly data centres will need to rollout "three-tier channel models" for IaaS to address the traditional distributor, reseller, and end-user model of the IT industry. In this instance the data centre will "become the distributor", noted O’Grady.
He continued "Data centres will also need to cater for hybrid models where a client’s IT is spread across the physical, virtual and software as a service (SaaS) solutions. In this way management of platforms, multi hypervisors and hybrid environments will become critical to a data centres success."
For eircom’s Mark Cawley, managed IT principal with the company, it’s the case that "people are dipping their toes in with SaaS" for the moment. For non-core applications, he said, such as messaging, e-mail security et cetera, it’s becoming popular. However, he added that more and more clients "are also talking to us about private cloud when it comes to the more core elements of their business". Continued Cawley, "That’s coming from a perspective of wanting to have the benefits of the cloud from a tech perspective but still wanting to maintain that level of control, which is understandable."
REAL VALUE
Interxion’s Duncan unsurprisingly said that cloud computing will continue to drive developments in the data centre sector into the near future. Noting how a 2010 IBM survey showed that 91% of 2,000 IT professionals surveyed believed the cloud will be the primary IT delivery model by 2015, Duncan added that "with growing demand comes more technological developments".
Elaborating Duncan said, "With modular builds the data centre can deliver real value to an IT savvy organisation. Improvements on scalable systems will allow for further collaboration between organisations and their data centre provider regarding IT environments and operational efficiencies."
She continued, "Increasing numbers of connectivity providers with low latency services allow for a competitive edge for organisations to connect to their customers both domestically and abroad." Duncan added that "green initiatives" continue to influence the latest data centre designs.
"Again scalable systems help in increasing IT usage and ensure efficient usage of these systems. The increasing demand for high-density power means that firms utilising the latest industry hardware and software can continue to do so in an environment ideally suited to their needs," she revealed.
For his part, Datapac’s Sheridan commented that over the next 18 months data centres will continued to be "under increasing pressure to deliver greater processing power, more storage and greater reliability". He added, "In response to this we will see data centres focusing on these areas in order to differentiate themselves from their competition."
"Whilst doing this they have to remain competitive in the face of increasing energy costs. The offering has to add up for the customer and in these economically challenging times they also have to show real savings. There will also be a large amount of consolidation in this market; primarily due to the advent of cloud services being offered by the key players such as Microsoft, Google and IBM."
INFINITE ELASTICITY
Looking at the year ahead, Citrix’s Kyne did make the point that "in some ways" many people have underestimated the effort of writing cloud-aware applications. This will, he said, have to improve over the coming months, and emerging technology will likely ease this process.
"Up to now, people have paid lip service to the concept of ‘bursting’ to cloud," continued Kyne. "The concept of infinite elasticity is exciting, but has been hard to achieve. This is coming. IaaS vendors are acutely aware that they need to make it easier to on-board clients. Therefore the linking of private cloud (or simply existing data centre) to the public cloud is a growing focus."
Kyne told ComputerScope that he believed the next stage of seamless network connectivity between clouds, such as private to public, private to private, or public to public, "is underway". "It’s likely," he continued, "that hybrid clouds will be the watchword as we transition to cloud services. This will be great in some ways, but will cause issues around trust, identity or access. Emerging technologies that can create a secure and simple front door to cloud services will be necessary."
He concluded, "We’ll also see lots of innovation in cloud offerings thanks to the emergence of general open standards, such as OpenStack. This will remove some of the barriers to entry and allow for faster innovation around both technology and business offerings. It will also help to reduce the widespread fragmentation which is occurring in the cloud market currently."
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