DATA CENTRE PREDICTIONS
why 53% of enterprises that had moved
everything to public cloud are already
repatriating some of their data (IDC).
Storing data in one cloud and on-premises,
(hybrid cloud infrastructure) or in multiple
clouds (multi-cloud infrastructure) are
both sensible, proven approaches to
ensure organisations can remain in control
and beat the monopoly.
Monopolies and AI
AI will compete more strenuously against
. . . AI, fuelling monopolistic practices
and reducing competitive situations (a
key early example of this includes the
homogenisation of air travel pricing). To
be ready for what the fourth (and fifth)
industrial revolution brings, the division
between what requires ‘humans’ and
what does not will accelerate, so we will
continue to see the divvying-up of those
tasks and functions that require humans,
and those that AI does well. As time goes
on, humans will do what requires care,
creativity and artisanship; and everything
else will be automated. This year will see
this division of ‘labour’ accelerate.
Hackers and data breaches
New ways of identifying patients,
customers and depositors will be
developed this year, as the already
accelerating pace of hacking and data
breaches continues. There’s huge value
in stored data. Until they make these
changes, hospitals and medical providers,
for example, will remain strong targets
20
Issue 13
ORGANISATIONS
WILL STOP
UNNECESSARY
‘RIP AND
REPLACE’ TO
REDUCE WASTE
THIS YEAR.
due to the value of the data they store:
not just patient health information, but
also the patient identification that goes
along with it (government ID, birth date,
address, etc.).
Sustainability
Organisations will stop unnecessary
‘rip and replace’ to reduce waste this
year. When technology refresh cycles
come around, many organisations are
compelled by their vendors to take on
full replacement of both hardware and
software. This results of course, in a large
amount of technology waste that gets
processed, or ‘demanufactured’, (using
energy and human resources) for recycling
and disposal. Servers, which can contain
toxic chemicals like Beryllium, Cadmium,
Chromium Hexavalent, Lead, Mercury,
BFRs and more should be used until they
‘break’, not just until a vendor wants to sell
its customers a new round. It’s time for
that ‘rip and replace’ culture to reform.
Storage is a great example of a place
where that reform can happen. Software-
defined storage, with ultra-strong data
resiliency schemes, is a great way to take
data servers to their true end-of-life, rather
than replacing at refresh time. Adopting a
robust software-defined storage solution
that can scale infinitely using standard
servers – and that is ‘generation-agnostic’
so it can accommodate the steady
evolution of hardware over time – is a
good way to reduce waste.
What is ultra-strong data resiliency
in storage? When storage is spread
across a collection of storage servers,
those nodes can share a highly parallel
distributed logic that has no single point
of failure – it doesn’t not depend on any
single component. This kind of system is
resilient, self-healing, adaptive, location
aware and constantly renewing. In
that kind of scenario, you can wait for
hardware to fail before you replace it,
because it won’t affect data availability
– server outages are not a problem. Even
better, some resiliency models can lose
a full data centre – or a data centre plus
a server. Eventually, servers will fail.
When that happens, their metal, plastics
and glass can be recycled; and toxic
components disposed of safely. Why
accelerate and increase the processing,
waste and energy when using the
systems until they must be replaced is a
solid option? ◊
www.intelligentdatacentres.com