THE EDGE
he data centre is a mighty
force in the global economy,
helping brands deliver cloud
and Internet-based services to
consumers at a huge scale. With growing
scale and increasing consumer demands
for faster, more reliable services, the
pressure has been on the IT function to
optimise, rationalise and monetise at pace.
T
Yet the same pressures face the team
in streamlining the data centre delivery
of business services and increasing
demands for reliability and uptime cannot
be met through incremental technology
change alone.
This is where new, but tragically
misunderstood technologies like AI
and Augmented Reality (AR) can add
value. However, it’s best to thoroughly
understand the way the technologies add
value and have a firm grip on what they
offer – and what’s just hype – before you
make big investments.
the consumer realm, it soon made itself
useful in the enterprise world too. Why are
companies like Microsoft and Snap betting
big on these solutions?
Beyond cool use cases for gamers, the
technology holds considerable promise for
anyone working in complex environments.
While the thought of lens-bedecked
workers might conjure up a vision of
warehouse workers, the truth is that
anyone working with time, space and
complexity issues could do with a fairy
godmother helping them out. That’s the
promise of Augmented Reality – literally
showing the path or the next step to take
in any procedural situation.
The applications for mentoring, guiding
and simply speeding up complex tasks
are enormous and could easily span
whole categories like teaching, surgery,
engine repair, boundary surveying, or
even secure crowd control. Technology
that changes the way humans
The temptation is there since these
technologies hold out the offer of
creating efficiencies in data centre
optimisation for energy use, staff time in
diagnosing and fixing faults (and regularly
scheduled maintenance) and keeping to
customer SLAs. By adding automation to
the mix, most organisations are betting
that they can supercharge their IT teams
to work faster and smarter without
burning them out.
Augmented Reality – a new way
of seeing
Augmented Reality (AR) made a big splash
in the consumer space with Pokémon GO
– but like all technologies that start within
www.intelligentdatacentres.com
Robert Neave, CTO and Co-founder,
Nlyte Software
DCIM NOT ONLY
ALLOWS FACILITY
MANAGERS TO
TARGET THE
DATA THEY
HOLD, IT CAN
ALSO HELP MINE
ADDITIONAL
ENVIRONMENTAL
DATA TO HELP
RUN THE
FACILITY BETTER
AND MORE
EFFICIENTLY.
interact with software for the physical
management of data centre assets and
the location of logical workloads would
be a massive boon to assisting staff in
a hurry to meet SLAs or to guide newer
joiners unsure of the right process.
An augmented view of current and
future data centre capacity provides
greater future-proofing and the ability to
both troubleshoot on the fly as well as
strategically plan with all the required
information right in front of users’ eyes.
Simply put, AR helps with instructing
remote personnel to make changes and
allow managers to see what they can
see. AR also helps reduce response times
to change, risks, travel costs and carbon
impact too.
Issue 12
69