Intelligent Data Centres Issue 30 | Page 49

HYPERSCALE DATA CENTRES ARE SET TO DOUBLE IN GLOBAL MARKET SHARE BY 2025 AND IT IS EASY TO SEE WHY . www . intelligentdatacentres . com
END USER INSIGHT END USER INSIGHT to companies in-house . Businesses that do not have the expertise should not risk designing or implementing alone . Partnering with a third-party expert can help take their technology infrastructure strategies to the next level and help maximise value .
How is the growing use of cloud technology impacting infrastructure requirements ?
Growing cloud adoption , especially over the last year , has been precipitated by the need for more resilient and flexible infrastructure . In fact , Aptum ’ s recent Cloud Impact Study surveyed 400 IT decisionmakers at the start of the pandemic and found two of the top drivers behind cloud adoption are increased agility ( 56 %) and Business Continuity ( 48 %).
The remote working experience is a good example of the shift towards resilience and a focus on Business Continuity . Collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams paved the way for an easier transition for many organisations . With hybrid and remote working arrangements looking like they are here to stay , organisations now may require higher Service Level Agreements ( SLAs ) for business-critical solutions where any slight risk of downtime is not an option .
Additionally , ensuring infrastructure is scalable is key to enabling agility and continuity . Throughout the pandemic , businesses across all sectors experienced fluctuations in demand , but those using Infrastructure-as-a-Service ( IaaS ) and Platform-as-a-Service ( PaaS ) cloud offerings had the option of scaling back operations across those services and redistributing funds to other areas .
What are some of the common trends you ’ re seeing in relation to data centre usage ?
As more companies choose to keep workers remote , on-premises infrastructures are decreasing in popularity compared to off-premise options . Aptum ’ s research found that 59 % of respondents are planning to decrease on-premises deployments in the next 18 – 24 months . The cloud ’ s most recognisable benefits , such as security , connectivity and scalability , have become requirements for every company and are driving the shift away from on-premise data centres .
Also , to keep their workers online and ensure failover , more CIOs are refining their Disaster Recovery ( DR ) plans and data centres can play a crucial role in those plans as off-site backup locations . For many , the pandemic has been the first test of various data protection , retention and replication measures .
Confronting some of the gaps that may have been exposed is leading many organisations towards a DR strategy that utilises distributed cloud resources to create new platforms that support business applications , so organisations are not reliant upon just one platform . In a distributed cloud DR plan , organisations can utilise redundant infrastructure and high availability of data centre facilities as a lifeline , ensuring data is replicated and easily accessible from multiple locations .
How can business leaders capitalise on the value of their business through successful infrastructure initiatives / strategies ?
A holistic strategy is vital to the business outcomes of any transformation project . Research has shown companies that successfully execute holistic infrastructure upgrades generate more revenue , more profit and have higher job satisfaction among employees . Taking an approach that prioritises the interconnectivity of infrastructure so visibility , security and control are embedded in the initial design can ensure services run at maximum efficiency and costs are optimised .
How could a poor infrastructure management approach present obstacles to success ?
Poor infrastructure management is often the result of an inconsistent or narrow approach to workload placements . This will raise the costs of any transformation project and create obstacles in the form of resource scarcity .
For example , in the pursuit of a cloudfirst policy , an organisation may move inappropriate workloads to public cloud platforms . As it gradually becomes clearer that an application may perform better in a private cloud or on-premises environment , the business could end up pursuing an unplanned and unregulated hybrid environment .
If organisations have blind spots across their environments , it becomes more difficult to track workloads and any security drift , which can result in compliance fines . Moving data into and out of the public cloud also creates additional costs , not only in terms of time , organisational costs and business disruption , but also in data egress fees from public cloud environments .
This is often caused by a lack of knowledge and specific skills . Businesses rarely have the in-house skills to handle a broad technology landscape .
How do you predict data centres will be utilised in the next five years ?
Hyperscale data centres are set to double in global market share by 2025 and it is easy to see why . As industries such as gaming through to healthcare require quicker access to increasing volumes of data , storage solutions are adapting to hyperscale data centres and cloud solutions to fulfil many of the automation , storage and access requirements of an array of industries . I expect to see these areas to grow significantly and to become more sophisticated . ◊

HYPERSCALE DATA CENTRES ARE SET TO DOUBLE IN GLOBAL MARKET SHARE BY 2025 AND IT IS EASY TO SEE WHY . www . intelligentdatacentres . com

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