Three ways in which transformation of the modern datacentre has begun

Digital transformation is driving complexity into the datacentre while expecting it to deliver increasing simplicity and agility. The exponential growth of data, data points, and complex matrix of networking, cannot be managed and countered by the move towards software defined everything and everything as a service, amongst others. We look at three significant factors that will impact the design and architecture of the modern datacentre in the future.

#1 Self-learning 

In order to build future proof datacentres, the way forward according to Gartner, is to look at the datacentres more holistically rather than by business specific workloads. Bringing in artificial intelligence and machine learning to manage the demands of the overall datacentre as a self-learning, self-optimising service, intelligent services delivery center will be the way forward. By adopting an intelligent, self-learning approach for the datacentre, outcomes can be better optimised to deliver predefined goals and service levels.

Datacentre managers will need to break away from the modular approach of building datacentres for specific workloads, that will be unable to cope with increasing complexity. They will need to adopt the approach of an end to end, intelligent, self-learning datacentre. 

#2 Scaling down and redistribution

The traditional datacentre is under siege to adapt and transform itself. The traditional approach was always to build for delivering IT services and delivery. Now that approach has leapfrogged into something best described as, where can we find those IT services. Gartner is predicting that by 2025, 80% of global enterprises will have scaled down the datacentre as we know it today, that is the traditional datacentre. 

The decision whether to host an application on premises and where to host, is increasingly getting complicated by factors such as the location of key customer population centers, network latency distributions, and geographical regulations and compliances, such as GDPR. The cost of rebuilding and modernising datacentres using a legacy approach of build and operate as an organisation’s capital asset, is increasingly becoming difficult to justify. 

#3 Customer experience

When building a datacentre strategy, it is important to consolidate the services expected from the datacentre by its customers. The datacentre strategy cannot be defined by the hardware, software, network, architecture, vendors, premises, but must also include the expectations from the organisation to help the business to succeed. Similar to the development of technology platforms, services will need to be delivered according to on-premises, externally hosted, co-located, or cloud-based customers. 

The core competencies of the datacentre going forward, can be described as: driving and managing efficiencies; effective and secure deployments; scaling while enabling the enterprise to fail faster. The IT organisation is responsible for the overall end user experience around the datacentre and must have the tools to monitor and manage the services and processes dependent on the datacentre. 

Key takeaways 

• Look at the datacentre more holistically rather than by business specific workloads
• Adopt the approach of an end to end, intelligent, self-learning datacentre. 
• The traditional datacentre is under siege to adapt and transform itself. 
• By 2025, 80% of global enterprises will have scaled down the datacentre as we know it today.