As the world moved online seemingly overnight in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the criticality of data centres and the unrelenting reliance on them across all walks of life became an enduring storyline of the crisis.
This reality will manifest in new ways in 2021 as the data centre and the information ecosystem orbiting it emerge from the pandemic with a fourth utility criticality, complete with all the expectations and responsibilities that implies. This is among the emerging 2021 data centre trends identified by experts from Vertiv, a global provider of critical digital infrastructure and continuity solutions.
Data centres have long been held to high availability standards, but the shift toward utility-like status will be noticeable in two ways, according to the experts.
First, those high expectations for network availability will extend deep into rural and remote areas, bringing critical applications to more of the population. This will increase pressure on data centers to maintain connectivity even at the outer edges of their networks.
Second, any distinction between availability and connectivity will be erased, as the ability to ensure and protect connections across increasingly distributed hybrid networks becomes as much of a requirement as any traditional measure of data center uptime.
“Data centre have been moving toward public utility-type status for some time, but the pandemic has crystalised the need to establish the kinds of official guardrails that have been commonplace across other utilities,” said Chief Strategy and Development Officer for Vertiv, Gary Niederpruem.
“This isn’t just about working from home, although that is part of it. More importantly, it is about supporting the digital economy in its most mission-critical forms, which include increased reliance on telemedicine and health, enhanced e-commerce, and global telecommunications and mass media.”
