Data Center Trends to Watch in 2017

A recent survey by 451 Research found that most organizations will close their smaller, local data centers and server rooms within the next two years.

IT leaders and financial directors are realizing that owning, operating and maintaining a data center may not be the best use of their resources. With the average U.S. data center approaching 20 years of age, enterprises simply don’t want to deal with outdated facilities and building systems infrastructure.

Instead, organizations are turning to the cloud and data center colocation providers. A colocation facility makes it possible to adopt a hybrid data center model. This allows organizations to run legacy, private cloud and public cloud infrastructures in a secure and resilient fashion.

Partnering with a colocation provider can offer greater agility, security and reliability — not to mention reduced capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operational expenditures (OPEX), along with the ability to quickly scale.

More Power to the People

In this era of the latest converged infrastructure, even one IT device can consume 4 to 5kW of power which is what the typical low-density data center cabinets are built to handle. High density data centers require only half of the space as compared with its predecessors. With the latest technology and power density upgrades, fewer cabinets will be required to support the same amount of equipment.

Security is Ever Increasing

While many companies focus on cyber security, the data center’s physical security is just as critical.  Enterprises are moving toward multi-tenant and hosted data center facilities which is creating the need for greater security.  This is because sharing your physical infrastructure with other tenants can put your data at risk.

Many colocation data centers are increasing their physical, building infrastructure and logical security. For example, they are adding more cameras and physical security checkpoints and biometrics. They are also redesigning their command centers — looking at how the room is set up, what tasks they can perform, who can access it and how easy it is to see into it.

Connectivity is King

In today’s 24/7 business world, the ability to transmit information at lightning fast speeds is critical.  Customer’s expect on-demand access to services and don’t want to wait for apps to work or web pages to download. To keep up with the amount of workloads moving to the data center, they will need to provide additional services without huge costs or time delays.

Multiple carriers in a data center offers a greater degree of connectivity and enables redundancy, optimal uptime, and cost-efficiency, all of which are great benefits to any business seeking to outsource their data center.

Cloud, Cloud and more Cloud

A few years back, there was talk of the cloud having the potential to “kill” the data center. However, over time we’ve seen that cloud and data centers are not in competition, rather they complement one another and need to work together in order to properly function.

Cloud-based businesses increasingly rely on colocation providers to support their large data storage needs. Data center management teams need to focus part of their efforts on supporting increased usage from cloud-based companies with more power, speed and bandwidth.

By 2020, International Data Center found that 40 percent of data in the digital universe will be “touched” by the cloud, meaning either stored, perhaps temporarily, or processed in some way. And with the digital universe experiencing unprecedented growth, we’ll see cloud capabilities being a must in data centers for most customers going forward in 2017 and beyond.

First Communications Data Center

Located in the heart of the Midwest, First Communications data center is strategically located in downtown Chicago.  Chicago’s central location has long made it a hub for financial services, technology and a host of consumer goods and services industries.

First Communications has significant capacity to provide colocation, and cloud management services with the ability to scale in space and power.  Our CloudConnection service offers secure, high-speed connections to over 500 cloud providers.  Take advantage of our limited time YOLO Colo offer where you can get a full cabinet with 2.5kW and 20Mbps Internet access for $699 and half a cabinet with 2.5kW and 20Mbps Internet access for $499.

Contact Ryan Patterson at RPatterson@firstcomm.com for sales questions or call (312) 895-8841.

For more information about First Communications Data Center and our YOLO COLO promotion, watch this short video here.

By: Lisa Sons, Product Manager