Traditional data centres are not able to adequately handle the fast-evolving data requirements of today, and businesses are increasingly urged to look to new-age data centres in order to survive. Although a seemingly daunting concept, the industry reassures that new-age data centre adoption comes with many benefits, such as cost savings, agility, energy and space efficiencies, and customisation.
“Historically, data centres were positioned as a centralised environment to access service provider products and services, as well as reduce costs of last mile for VPN solutions,” explains Lex van Wyk, MD of Teraco Data Environments. “In today's reality, a data centre needs to be a neutral environment where a client can access multiple local and international carriers, as well as content and service providers, at a reasonable cost.”
According to Manisha Bhoola, senior manager in infrastructure consulting at Accenture: “Although operating a data centre is becoming an increasingly complex and specialised business, the emergence of independent data centre service providers means it's not only mega-enterprises that can afford to have one.”
Lourens Swanepoel, technology infrastructure director at Avanade, agrees that the new-age data centre will no longer be confined to a brick-and-mortar environment housed within a secure area on-premise, or in a partner-provided hosting centre. “Rather, the new-age data centre will consist of a modular architecture that can cost-effectively scale to provide additional capacity to meet the requirements of the enterprise.”
He continues: “The first principle is to recognise that the new-age data centre is not based on one single technology or vendor solution. Rather, it is based on multiple technologies, integrated into the new-age data centre. These technologies span across the various layers - physical, management, networking and integration - and it is how these technologies are integrated that determines the organisation's capability to deliver the new-age data centre as a service to the enterprise.”
According to Edwin Thompson, GM of technology and infrastructure at MTN Business, there are numerous technologies currently available in the data centre space, all of which form a critical part of the efficient operating of a data centre. “What is important to note is that technologies have evolved, allowing the new-age data centre to be more efficient and redundant.”
Rachel Cooke, business manager: critical facilities services at HP, identifies some of today's compatible data centre facility option examples to include corridor data centres, which incorporate multiple 'data halls' to serve as separate raised floor environments; and multi-hybrid data centres, where each data hall is engineered with the appropriate operational tier (enabling IT to be deployed and segmented according to criticality).
Looking local, looking ahead
Locally, there appear to be a lot of mixed messages in the market, largely due to vendors attempting to advance their own concept of the new-age data centre, Swanepoel explains. “This is particularly relevant to the 'cloud' concept. CIOs and CTOs are being so bombarded with mixed messages, they have become hesitant to discuss the topic with their organisations, and this is causing a delay in the uptake of the new-age data centre and cloud in South Africa.”
Internationally, he says, organisations are more open to the discussion around the new age data centre concept and how this can support cloud in the enterprise environment. “We are seeing discussions centred on cloud optimisation, and the best use of various cloud platforms, be they on-premise, hosted, or public.”
Thompson also reports that, internationally, CEOs and CFOs are paying more attention to the planning, design and architecture of data centres. “Gartner recently indicated that a global trend in the data centre services market includes the shift towards industrialised services, including infrastructure utility services, cloud computing infrastructure as a service, and platform as a service.
Van Wyk highlights that business continuity is a critical issue in this industry, as operations are ultimately automated and not reliant on human or administrative resources. “Furthermore, trends indicate infrastructure sharing is becoming key for carrier and service providers, as the benefits of vendor-neutral sharing are realised. Another emerging trend is the availability of peering exchanges, where operators exchange content at a minimal bandwidth cost.”
Swanepoel identifies mobility as a growing driver for the adoption of new-age data centres within organisations - with its role to provide a platform to deliver mobility to the user. “One of the promises that the market is looking towards the new-age data centre to deliver on, is usage-based computing, which will enable organisations to accurately match computing resources to demand, and to be able to effectively expand and contract the data centre to match. An example of this is the ability to move servers to a low power state if not utilised, and commission them back into the environment once demand for computer resources increases.”
According to Cooke, the newer POD and FlexDC types of designs are changing the industry rapidly, and are providing a new avenue for finally deploying data centre facilities that are much less expensive to plan, design and deploy, while simultaneously meeting the requirements for much higher levels of energy efficiency and green proficiency. “We see the data centre facilities industry evolving into a commoditised industry, whereby pre-manufactured types of units will be deployed to both respond to business agility and cost containment measures, while simultaneously supporting desires to integrate IT and facilities and to standardise and consolidate everything. This is the final piece of the puzzle that is enabling true IT and facilities integration across the enterprise, as IT systems continue to become more powerful and miniaturised, requiring much higher levels of density at the data centre rack level, and changing the game as to how the facility is designed and constructed.”
Explains Bhoola: “We are seeing a move in the industry to a consolidation and standardisation of data centres - previously we had businesses buying their own data centres and there was no standardisation in terms of security.
“Organisations are looking for ways to reduce energy and space; as a result, more and more organisations will have their data centres in the cloud, moving their applications off-site. Moving forward, the industry will have a modular data centre with defined class segregations, technology-aided cooling, predefined class modules, as well as managed capacities with limited flexibility,” she concludes.