As we approach end of another year, it is time to reflect what is in store for us in the Data Center world in 2015 and beyond.
Up until now, from the dot com boom days, we witnessed first the proliferation and later consolidation of data centers.
Now that is about to change. Gartner recently pointed out there is a new disruption about to happen in the data center world. Growth of Internet of Things (IOT) would churn out hitherto unseen volumes of data every minute from zillions of Internet-enabled wearables, devices and industrial equipment all around the world. This data would have to be analyzed instantaneously for operational intelligence, predictive and prescriptive analytics and even national security. This would have major impact on data center operations.
The current paradigm of centralized operations means transmitting data over thousands of miles from point of data origination to central servers and then sending back to originating point and elsewhere, again over thousands of miles, and a few times over. This would require massive bandwidths and massive computing power. Instead we will see an emergence of a “glocal” model, with distributed data centers serving immediate local needs and then transmitting raw as well as processed data to centralized processing centers for deeper analysis for global consumption.
When this happens, it will bring about an overhaul of business processes and have a transformational effect on data center operations. Data Center operations will look like an intricate supply chain network, involving business partners, transfer pricing, and running transportation and cost optimization models. Data Center operations will be software-driven, even transcending what is currently defined within the boundaries of a Software Driven Data Center (SDDC), which is primarily about virtualization of computing resources. Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) will be at the heart of this transformation, with a workflow-driven Business Process Management (BPM) layer that would auto-enable data traffic via a set of algorithms working on constraint-based planning.
The use cases of Internet of Things, from consumer efficiency to health care to transportation and even agriculture is fascinating. What is less written about is the profound impact this will have back-end on the Data Centers that would have to support this new era of a ubiquitous connected world.