The majority of organisations are shifting their data centre sourcing strategies from ownership to access.
That was the word from Kevin Govender, group chief enterprise architect at Transnet, speaking during the Data Centres: The Next Frontier 2015 conference, at the Forum in Bryanston this morning.
He noted in a world were businesses are looking to cut costs, the access model makes more sense.
According to Govender, the question that most organisations are asking themselves is either to build and own their own data centre, or outsource and subscribe to services and preferred access.
Faced with this question, he pointed out cloud, big data, mobility, social and regulation are influencing the decision-making process and adding complexity to data centre strategies.
By owning a data centre, organisations face the burden of maintenance and ensuring that the data centre is still valuable while also guaranteeing that it is green, among other issues.
However, today most organisations are realising they are not in the business of attending to data centres and they are adopting the access model which ensures they focus on their core business.
He noted organisations are moving from the capex model to the opex funding model in regards to their data centres.
Govender also explained that the "data infrastructure boundary" is shifting as cloud computing and consumerisation will radically shrink the technology perimeter.
For designing data centres for the digital world, he urged organisations to consider three characteristics - agility and innovation; intelligence and integration; and risk and availability.
He called on enterprises to develop a data centre strategy that is capable of creating a competitive advantage from digital technology.
In regards to agility and innovation, he said businesses must shift their focus from IT efficiency to value creation; create innovative value for their business; move from IT management to digital inspiration; and build infrastructure platforms that lead to faster deployment of technology.
Pointing to intelligence and integration, Govender noted organisations must aim to create intelligent workflows.
"They must also aim for intelligence linked with the integration of data centres across different providers and geographic locations. It also involves high performance data analysis of increasing volumes of data and intelligent insight," he said.
Explaining risk and availability, Govender said the digital world is creating new types and levels of risk mostly because of cyber crime, thus CIOs must "focus on risk and availability in a new and broader sense".
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