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data centre of tomorrow
The data centr
With the digital transforma
accelerating in recent times
forced to make some big d
approach
And the mountain of data co
Philip Bridge
President
Ontrack
In 2018, the global volume of data was a 'mere' 33
zettabytes (ZB). By 2025 though, IDC predicts that number
will balloon to 175 ZB. With the amount of information
gathered and processed by businesses growing all the time,
legacy data centres are beginning to struggle under strain.
The era of big data demands a new approach. Today,
businesses require a flexible data centre solution that can
scale upon demand. This is one of the reasons why the cloud
has become so popular in recent years. The other big factor
is latency.
When looking to adapt offerings in real-time from data
from sources such as transactions or social data, that data
needs to be accurate and up-to-date. To facilitate this, data
centres need to be able to get the right data to the right
applications as quickly as possible. Any delay could leave a
business using inaccurate and outdated information to drive
their decision-making.
As BIS Infotech notes, big data has had a significant
impact on how data centres handle traffic and processing,
with batch and stream processing expected to be handled in
real-time. "To support all these transactions/processes that
are happening in real-time, a data centre must be equipped
with enough processing power, storage I/Os and network
bandwidth."
Big data demands
The demands of big data are undoubtedly having
an impact on IT professionals' thinking when it comes
to choosing a data centre. One trend is clear. Very few
businesses have the money or resources to build their own
dedicated data centres. The odd big corporate – such as
a big bank or pharmaceutical company – may be able to
justify the investment, but that is usually for regulatory or
security reasons. The vast majority of businesses are instead
turning towards colocation and the cloud.
As well as the obvious cost benefits of having no capital
expenditure, moving to a cloud-based solution also gives
businesses access to a greater amount of processing power
than they would often be able to achieve on their own.
In the past, this kind of processing power was either the
domain of large enterprises or would have meant a large
bill from a data centre provider. Yet, as technology has
advanced, this type of capability is becoming more and
more affordable for small and medium-sized firms too.
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