Intelligent Data Centres Issue 07 | Page 36

FEATURE AS WELL AS REDUCED COSTS, DATA CENTRE MODERNISATION CAN LEAD TO GREATER IT AGILITY AND (AS A RESULT) A MORE SOLID FOUNDATION UPON WHICH TO BUILD YOUR BUSINESS’ DIGITAL RENOVATION. how ambitious and well-planned) is surely doomed to fail. That foundation is always the data centre. UK data centres are estimated to be worth US$135 billion by 2025, with business investment in data infrastructure increasing by up to 11%. Indeed, as the adoption of new technologies and increasing digitisation of everything generates more data, dependence on data centres is only set to increase, with revenues expected to boom as a result. However, one of the major hurdles faced by many businesses is ageing enterprise data centre infrastructure. IDC claims that the average data centre is 12 years old. These data centres were simply not built to accommodate perpetually scaling modern demands in terms of server space, power and cooling requirements. As such, any major Digital Transformation should begin by transforming the data centre itself. As well as reduced costs, data centre modernisation can lead to greater IT agility and (as a result) a more solid 36 Issue 07 foundation upon which to build your business’ digital renovation. However, building or transforming a data centre is not a small task. Mercifully, organisations have a number of more flexible and cost-effective alternative options available to them. They can rent space from a cloud hosting provider, house their hardware in a colocation facility or opt for a hybrid cloud solution – splitting their resources between public clouds, private clouds, on- premise servers and data centre suites. Outsourcing to a colocation or public cloud host is the fastest way to get your resources online quickly and the upfront investment will be less significant. Cloud Solutions as part of Phase 1 The latest research from the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) discusses in great length the www.intelligentdatacentres.com