By Charles F. Moreira
Despite the rise of cloud computing and the belief that they challenge the relevance of on-premise data centres, Ovum’s Roy Illsley sees on-premise centres remaining central to organisations’ IT and business strategy in 2013.
These trends range from increased penetration of virtualisation in all its forms to the need for sustainability in how data centres are operated, making on-premise data centres agile and cost effective.
The challenge with on-premise data centre technology is that it is perceived as inflexible and expensive, based on past experiences of the time it takes for internal IT departments to deploy new services.
Virtualisation technology has seen it expand beyond just servers, to encompass all the layers in the delivery of IT to the customer. This technology is changing the on-premise data centre from being siloed and reactive, to more collaborative (or open and shared) in nature, making it agile and proactive.
The result of increased virtualisation (or use of cloud services) means the role of the network takes on a greater significance; providing the ability to deliver services to customers. However, its specialised status, in terms of hardware, will in 2013 be challenged by the rise of software defined networks (SDNs), much like how server virtualisation challenged server hardware ideologies a decade ago.
The role of sustainable IT is affecting choices around how and why IT services are delivered. 2013 will see sustainability become more focused on cost saving, and will lead to more efficient internal IT delivery methods such as virtualisation, SDNs, and the use of converged infrastructure solutions (so-called cloud-in-a-box).
Essentially
*Virtualisation technology is reaching maturity as more production-grade workloads migrate to virtual environments.
*The endpoint virtualisation market is slowly showing signs of wider adoption, as bring your own technology (BYOT) in organisations becomes normal practice.
*The concept of the SDN will see a specialist versus generalist debate as interest in SDNs increases.
*Sustainable data centre operations will see accelerated growth as more organisations look to reduce unnecessary costs.
The growth of converged infrastructure solutions will see a battle between the reference architecture and pre-integrated stock keeping unit (SKU), shrink-wrapped appliance approach.
More organisations will move to the hybrid cloud as an extension of internal data centre capability.
The management layer is being driven by an increasing awareness by enterprise customers of the need for more openness in the way technology communicates and is managed.
Moving beyond co-location
Ovum’s Ian Brown sees a growing demand for data centre capacity built and managed by specialist thirty-third operators as a new generation of data centre operators expands outside of traditional co-location markets to provide enterprise-class facilities to high-profile customers and partners.
For decades the majority of enterprises have built and managed their own data centres. But cost, location, the cloud, and a new generation of data centre operators keen to profit from growing demand for space and power capacity are changing that.
“There’s a new class of data centre operator, for whom the title co-location host is no longer wholly appropriate. These suppliers are building enterprise-class data centres in key locations and letting data halls to large enterprises, digital media and content distributors, social networking sites, cloud service providers, and mobile apps and related services, as well as the traditional users of carrier-neutral co-location hosts such as telecoms and financial services,” said Brown.
Customers get access to secure and resilient tier3 facilities, plenty of power capacity to support the high-density systems typical of cloud deployments, and plenty of connectivity options from a wide range of network suppliers. Some industry sectors benefit from the “data centre as a hub” – an ecosystem of partners that assembles in a key location or data centre such as around financial exchanges, web and online services, or media content providers and distributors.
Such hubs attract customers, partners, and service providers like bees to a honey pot. Enterprise data centre customers can also avoid large multi-million dollar capex investments and the management of long-term building projects. It is particularly attractive for large international enterprises that may need regional or local country-based data centres for compliance or even latency reasons in support of their local and regional offices.
However, it’s not all plain sailing for customers. For some large enterprises, the enterprise data centre is a key asset in their property portfolio. Customers may have to commit to a large amount of space and power capacity upfront, without being in control of the data centre build and expansion, the pace at which it is undertaken, or the negotiations with power suppliers. And sites are shared: customers may take a complete self-contained data hall, but infrastructure such as power, cooling, and connectivity may not be so self-contained. Security-sensitive tenants may also feel a shared campus is a risk too far.
The bottom line
*A new breed of data centre operators is moving on from traditional co-location services and markets.
*Enterprise data centre operators have a significant role to play in helping enterprises avoid the cost of building new facilities.
*Enterprises must assess their appetite for sharing versus the risks of long-term investments in facilities they may not need.
