centre of attention
Unsung Hero
Not all heroes wear capes. Timothy Arnold, colo technology director at Six Degrees Group,
discusses how the data centre is the unsung hero in our ever increasing age of data.
T
he volume of data we create
is growing at a dramatic rate,
and it’s not slowing down
anytime soon; by 2025, IDC
predicts that the ‘global
datasphere’ will be 10x the size it is
today, rising to 163 zettabytes.
The Internet of Things (IoT) and
Big Data are key drivers behind this
explosive growth and healthcare,
energy and manufacturing
businesses – to name but a few –
are utilising this huge increase in
consumer and industry intelligence
10 | October 2017
to drive revenue and enrich
customer experience.
To support this acceleration
in data creation and to maximise
the opportunities it generates,
businesses of all sizes need to plan
ahead and build flexibility and
security into their IT estate. For
most this means implementing
a cloud solution, be it public,
private or hybrid, to ‘host’ virtual
infrastructure, or migrating on-
premises equipment to a third party.
Ultimately, however, these cloud
and ‘off-premises’ solutions have to
live somewhere; in data centres.
The growth of data and cloud
across all industries – Gartner
predicts that the public cloud
market alone will grow by 18%
in 2017 – combined with issues
of data sovereignty and the
impending GDPR legislation,
means that it’s crucial for the
‘work horses’ – the data centre
facilities – to be secure, resilient,
scalable and agile. So, what does
this actually mean?