While constant change is always a factor in data center management, recent years have been particularly impactful for the data center. Businesses are always looking for ways to increase efficiency and sustainability, and recently there have been more opportunities to do so.

Even so, findings from ABB highlight the challenges of innovation in the data center to keep pace with company objectives. Only 29% of decision-makers in the data center say that their current facilities meet their needs. The most cited upgrades needed are security (45%) and bandwidth (43%).

Data center managers also struggle with legacy systems and the lack of visibility into both technical and business features, which limits their ability to minimize errors and achieve better operational efficiency.

There are four important trends currently shaping data center management:

Edge Computing: More and more data is being generated outside the traditional data center or in the cloud. Gartner estimates the volume to be around 10% of all data, and expects that number to grow to 50% by 2025, with services at the edge continuing to advance. The shift to the edge for computing demands that companies pay attention to connectivity to deliver optimal experiences.

5G Infrastructure: Mobility and 5G go hand-in-hand in shaping how the workforce will stay productive. Ericsson noted that at the end of 2020, there were 92 commercial 5G networks in 38 countries, with over 320 million 5G subscribers expected in the United States by the end of 2025.

Converged Technologies: Operational and information technologies have traditionally been isolated and independently operating elements in an organization. However, that line is beginning to blur so much that many companies are integrating OT and IT into a single platform with comprehensively applied data governance, security, and process automation. The advent of the internet of things (IoT) has driven interest in higher levels of visibility into connected systems.

IoT Everywhere: There will be no slowing of the advancement of IoT, and companies are even shifting their attention from individual, personal smart devices to designing smart buildings where devices are interacting with a shared infrastructure. The walls and ceilings of buildings will be used to house infrastructure that equips occupants with a heightened digital experience.

These trends demonstrate the importance of partnering with data center management solution providers that share some forward-focused thinking about the data center. Choose a provider that will help you:

·         Embrace a collaborative focus with design, operation, and decommissioning phases for the data center.

·         Develop a clearly-defined map for the data center’s role in the business’s future.

·         Work with engineering and architectural teams to create an optimized data center.

·         Improve visibility so that issues are quickly identified, while reducing risks and pursuing resilience.

·         Create synergy across all locations for consistency.

Across data center management topics, decision-makers are asking whether their infrastructure could be better and more sustainable, whether downtime and outages could be eliminated, and how to address environmental concerns, compliance, and privacy issues. These are complex considerations for your data center management, but you don’t have to wade through them without guidance. Contact us at eXemplify for assistance in designing your data center to address current trends affecting your operations and meet future challenges.