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The data centre of the future Ten big trends
By Andy Lawrence, vice president, research, datacenter technologies at 451 Research and Rhonda Ascierto, research manager, datacenter technologies & eco-efficient IT at 451 Research.
In the first of this two-part piece, the datacentre of the future – part one: innovation accelerates, published last month; we described some of the high-level drivers for change that are rippling across the datacentre industry. In this report, we outline 10 trends that we believe are likely to shape the design, build, operation and sourcing of datacentres over the next seven years, to 2021.
The 10 trends
The 10 trends identified below are intended as discussion points. However, we believe that all of these trends are either firmly underway, and will continue to make their mark, or have a high degree of likelihood of occurring.
1. Standardized, but lots of options. The global datacentre market is now so large – and growing – that even niche and specialist requirements can be met economically using standard components. In this way, the datacentre is beginning to mirror the process of standardization long evident in IT. Increasingly more components are made off-site and assembled on-site (and not just in prefab datacentres). Suppliers
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will increasingly produce or pre-configure a wide catalogue of components, equipment and designs, each optimized for specific situations and applications, which can be configured together according to design requirements. We expect much greater use of reference designs, blueprints and prefabricated products.
Because datacentres will be built for purpose, they will be efficient and well suited to their environment. For example, some will be primarily optimized (and geographically located) for energy efficiency, some for connectivity, some for availability, some for proximity to cities and customers, some to their workloads, and almost all for cost. Each may be uniquely configured, but based on repeatable designs.
2. Software-driven, autonomic and dark. The most efficient and agile next-generation datacentres will use advanced software for optimization. Increasingly more IT and datacentre monitoring, analysis, reporting and control software will be deployed, along with improved cloud orchestration, virtual machine management and software-driven (software-defined) datacentre technology.
While improvements in processors, networking and storage will continue along their impressive paths, some technologies and efficiency improvements will only be possible with extensive operator investment in comprehensive datacentre management software. These include higher or full utilization of IT; dynamic power provisioning, including use of utility smart grids; and integration with other datacentres, enabling lower spending on physical resilience. The software required spans datacentre infrastructure management (DCIM) software platforms and DCSO (datacentre service optimization or ‘dee-soh’) software. Datacentres will be ‘programmed’ and optimized for their purpose.
Related to this, operators will use proven methodologies, supported by software, to manage more processes, prevent problems and operate with less manual intervention.
As many functions as possible will be automated, or run centrally or from remote operations centres, lowering staff costs (relative to processing). Datacentre skills shortages in some developed geographies may expedite this trend.
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