The state of innovation and the resurgence of technological disruptions has reached unprecedented levels. In the coming years, there will be a high rate of change, which will see the migration from legacy systems to new age ones. These changes will redefine the very nature of how all aspects of technology interact with each other.
Aside from the core technology, important considerations will be given to environmental and business concerns. Energy efficiency will emerge as a dominant factor in decision making, and so will increasing the density and performance of data centers.
Independence of power: Increased consumption and pressures on power supplies from governments have translated into risks for companies in large data centers. For these companies, mitigating this risk will focus on future-proof power supplies. Large consumer companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft have already embraced and achieved partial independence in their power supplies.
Legality of privacy and data: Increased sensitivity to data security and privacy is constantly changing the dynamics of how companies store their data. The penetration of cloud-based services and advances in user behavior tracking will only promote it. Privacy laws and regulations will now decide how and where data is stored. And this will get darker with the large-scale adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) and its supporting infrastructure. Given this context, there is a significant possibility that most companies will focus on basic services and take advantage of data centers on demand or with colocation providers.
Decentralized and edge-centric deployments: The growing demand for services will require data centers to be “closer to consumption.” This will help nurture new age services like streaming, IoT, and more. Such an implementation will help reduce latency, increase connectivity, and bandwidth availability.
Located nodes: Edge deployments could also see the form of autonomous servers that could be deployed in urban areas; Such deployments could take advantage of building basements and terraces.
Convergence: An emerging trend is the convergence of servers and storage in a single box. The availability of solid-state drives and ultra-fast memory has enabled unified server and storage combinations.
Solid State Drive Penetration: The penetration of solid state drive products has already reached critical mass in consumer technology. In the coming years, data centers will include the adoption of such drives, and by 2020, bulk hard drive enclosures may have been completely replaced.
Docker containers: Docker containers help package software as ready to run code. These containers include everything that is required to run an application, everything that is required to be installed on a server. Such container cases have seen steady acceptance and are expected to increase. Docker containers will lead to a significant reduction in the number of servers and space.
For years to come, IT management teams will focus on procedures and policies, not hardware. The nature of these changes will put enormous pressure on legacy systems. There will be a paradigm shift that will see a greater commodification of data center hardwareand focus on economical, consumer-centric, and future-proof design.
