CIO OPINION business to help find answers to the important questions that matter to the board – such as how to improve customer experience , or how to reach new markets and territories .
With data centre modernisation , IT becomes an agent of business-focused transformation . It can focus on innovating and taking advantage of the opportunities brought about by a slew of new technologies , such as IoT , Big Data , Artificial Intelligence and analytics .
Across every industry , businesses are dealing with growing volumes of structured and unstructured data and modernising the data centre enables organisations to leverage this data for strategic decision-making .
Data centre modernisation is also about more than simply carrying on doing what you did before , only with updated technology . It is a real opportunity to take advantage of the previously unimagined computing power offered by public clouds and the ability to perform tasks at speeds that were not even a possibility before .
Much of this can be attributed to the sheer scale of what is available on the market . The top colocation providers , and the hyperscalers , house up to hundreds of thousands of servers , conducting trillions of storage transactions daily . Modernising the data centre is about harnessing this power and alongside it , the new possibilities for innovation .
In the past , IT departments have focused too much on looking after their hardware and infrastructure investments , and not enough on Digital Transformation .
The modern data centre also improves security and flexibility . Security is still one of the major stumbling blocks to the adoption of public cloud services and these are key to data centre modernisation .
This perception is faulty because instead of putting security at risk , data centre modernisation will enhance it . The leading cloud players and colocation providers have security budgets and experience that far exceeds what any organisation could hope to achieve on its own .
Another major benefit of Digital Transformation is that it allows businesses in every sector to create new applications and services , and make them available around the world , quickly . However , in certain sectors , such as financial services or healthcare , issues around compliance can present a hurdle . Modernising the data centre can solve this issue too . Looking back a few years , we saw many organisations get burned by investing in new technologies that promised transformation , but didn ’ t deliver – and certainly didn ’ t result in the promised return on investment .
Across every industry , businesses are dealing with growing volumes of structured and unstructured data and modernising the data centre enables organisations to leverage this data for strategic decision-making , and turn the massive volumes of data in the business into bottom-line results . It ’ s about developing systems and processes that harness the vast volumes of data in the organisation to drive better decision-making , cut costs , save time and more .
A major benefit of data centre modernisation and outsourcing is that tech teams will spend much less time managing hardware and trying to plan capacity . Also , they can work more closely with other areas of the
One thing is clear : data centre modernisation can help the business achieve a wide-range of benefits , adding significant business value and often becoming the essential cornerstone of Digital Transformation . p
40 INTELLIGENTCIO AFRICA www . intelligentcio . com