Intelligent Data Centres Issue 07 | Page 20

DATA CENTRE PREDICTIONS move from on-premise storage to large centralised clouds run by experts with real storage expertise. The good news is that this will facilitate and fuel our next industrial revolution. Take one example, autonomous vehicles (AV). Currently, autonomous vehicles are trained to gather specific data about a subset of their external context. By moving data storage off-premise, costs can be dramatically reduced, meaning engineers can more easily design algorithms that teach AVs to learn just as humans do, by capturing all the data in their surrounding environment, increasing data storage per hour from 500GB to 5TB. As data proliferates and storage costs get cheaper, we’ll also see streaming services start designing hyper personalised 20 Issue 07 customer experiences. Netflix is projected to spend US$15bn on content in 2019 and production, storylines, settings and talent are also of course driven by data. OUR DATA STORAGE REQUIREMENTS ARE ONLY SET TO INCREASE OVER THE COMING YEARS, AT AN UNPRECEDENTED PACE AND SCALE. Safeguarding your future Just as data centres rely on an abundance of cheap, reliable, electric power, we have to start thinking about data storage in a similar way. Like electricity, the need for storage just keeps growing and data centres are finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with the demand. Specialised cloud storage providers can operate at an enormous scale and can be far more economical than on-premises storage. Rather than relying on huge vendors which can often charge excessive egress fees, businesses should also look to independent cloud storage providers to future proof their business – having access to storage solutions at a low price is fundamental for any scaling business that will inevitably see a significant increase in data generation. ◊ www.intelligentdatacentres.com