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Data centres: cornerstone of digital economy

By Busie Mhlanga-Mjimba, Senior Conference Producer, ITWeb.
Johannesburg, 06 Jul 2015

Data centres are high investment areas and are typically built every 10 to 15 years. As a result, most companies end up tuning their environments over this period.

Only companies that have recently built their data centres will have taken advantage of some of the major trends - the others are retrofitting as applicable to minimise costs.

So says Stephen Green, MEA executive for the Data Centre Business Unit at Dimension Data, one of the speakers at the upcoming ITWeb Data Centres: The Next Frontier event taking place this month.

Green gives an example of retrofitted data centres around new thinking in hot and cold aisle containment. "New data centres have this as a feature off the racks, while old style data centres are using butchers' curtains to achieve the same result."

Two of the pressing issues regarding managing data centres are space and power, he notes. "Which are the main facility considerations given that most data centres are struggling to contain the growth that enterprise IT shops are experiencing."

Another pressing challenge comes from inside the facility - the transformation of compute/storage and networking are big considerations for the next round of optimisation.

According to Green, there are numerous case studies of this, but a recent case study would be a big insurance client.

"Like many global clients, they were looking to consolidate their data centres into smaller centralised footprints and to outsource the management of the environment to a service provider. Dimension Data provided a complete turnkey solution to them globally."

Green believes IT departments are under tremendous pressure to work with what they have and to innovate so they can better support business. "The biggest challenge being experienced is how to turn our legacy into the speed and agility that is being required in the digital economy."

Green stresses IT is going to have to consistently adopt new solutions to meet the growing demand from companies to enable business to compete.

It is clear the IT industry and business is undergoing a dramatic transformation which is going to require significant innovation done speedily, he notes. In his presentation at the data centres conference, Green will highlight some of the key areas where IT departments can take proactive, practical steps to position enabling platforms and solutions to deliver against the digital economy and its business demands.

"The primary message I'd like to see people take away from my presentation at this prominent event, is to reimagine their data centres as a business response centre that enables business to deliver against their clients' expectations.

"The reason for this is that as we move to the digital economy, the data centre will become even more important as the nerve centre within business. What and how we innovate in the data centre will mean the difference between success and failure for many businesses. We believe the next-generation data centre offerings are key to helping companies unlock this value."

Click here to find out more and register your interest in attending this event.

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