Shaping Up a Next-Gen Data Center

In this era of digitization, most companies face the massive challenge of maintaining growth while simultaneously maximizing IT infrastructure utilization. Making the right choice for a data center can prove to be a boon in this case, but even there, you’ll have to answer a lot of questions before zeroing on the right data center option. Should you build a data center or host your infrastructure with a data center host or cloud service provider? Or should you have a data center that can ‘burst into the cloud’ when you need more capacity, and ‘shrink back’ when the work is done?

In a world that is increasingly becoming agile, the IT function has to be a broker of value, and data centers have to quickly align themselves to this new world. This is a world where data centers are becoming software defined, and cloud is an integral part of every data center. Emerging trends like IoT are destined to create more ripples in data centers, as storage and networking needs will create a significant amount of data whose volume, velocity and structure will challenge the way existing data centers have been designed or created.

Also, with a boom in eCommerce and increase in number of licenses for banking, coupled with the Indian government’s strong focus on digitization, India is in the eye of a perfect data center storm.

The Indian data center infrastructure market will total $2 billion in 2016, a 5.2 percent increase from 2015, predicts research firm, Gartner, signifying the tremendous potential in this sector.

New approach towards building a next-gen data center

Today’s data centers are completely different than about a decade ago. A huge amount of data is exploding, as people are not only consuming data as well as generating them using their mobiles, PCs, and other devices. And there are several challenges with analysing such huge amount of data, where to store and encrypt then extract or move. Another major challenge is to protect it from several threats.

Today’s data centers require two IT approaches – the first approach is on the traditional IT that addresses the core business. It is an approach that is focused on predictability. This approach is optimized for areas that are more predictable and well-understood, and is plan driven and is approval based. Cycle times are typically long, and can run into months.

The second IT approach is to address the challenges put forth by the new SMAC era. This approach is the Next Gen IT approach. It is exploratory, experimenting to solve new problems and optimized for areas of uncertainty. This approach is empirical, continuous and process-based. Marrying the traditional IT approach with the Next Gen IT approach is the need of the hour for today’s data centers. Both these approached play a pivotal role in the digital transformation of the enterprise.

Private vs hosted data center services

As the market and adoption of cloud matures, enterprise customers are recognizing that not every application or service belongs to the cloud.

Cloud environments are easy to choose but expensive to stay, especially, for SMEs. Unless a business doesn’t have major complexity built-in their model, it requires simple scale and all web-tier, then hosted could is a better choice. As the business grows and complexity increases, they can choose to go ahead with the private cloud that suits their complexity of the model.

Cost also has a significant impact in running your own data center. So, while hosted cloud service costs you much less, business startups or SMEs, who don’t want to spend much in the beginning, need to have hosted cloud rather than the private data center.

Public cloud, private cloud and hybrid cloud, each has their own relevance. The best approach depends on the specific nature of the business but in most cases, it is a combination of Cloud that is relevant. Every enterprise is unique, and its cloud needs will be unique too. Understanding the basic terminology of cloud solutions is the first step toward finding the one that’s right for an organization.

How new technologies impact a data center

In a short span of time, the Internet of Things has grown at an exponential rate and the extent of its impact on existing systems and capacities in the future is unfathomable. The fundamental idea of the Internet of Things is to allow connectivity, via the internet, to a wide range of embedded systems, sensor and devices. This connection between the internet and people is generating large volumes of data, which will have a transformational impact on data centres. This is why data centres and data centre managers need to rethink and upgrade existing mechanisms to cope with the transition positively.

It is said that the number of internet-connected devices exceeded the number of human beings on the planet in 2011. By 2020, it is estimated that IoT will include 26  to 50 billion units, and IoT product and service suppliers will generate revenue exceeding $300 billion. The unprecedented surge of such devices, which include internet-connected devices, social media, websites, cameras, computers, and cloud applications, can be seen as a potential threat to data centres in terms of security, storage demands and chaos.