Some of the Scotch Partners team recently visited the ‘world’s biggest’ Data Centre gathering, Data Centre World at the Excel in London. Currently in its 11th year, Data Centre World promises to deliver ‘all the trends, all the opportunities and all the challenges for data centres everywhere’ and this year was no exception.
In previous years, Data Centre World has focused on considering all the facets necessary to build a functioning data centre. This year the focus had shifted to looking at future trends and what is coming next.
Energy efficiency and sustainability remain high on the data centre agenda with a lot of the exhibitors demonstrating their products designed to address the issues that are presented with Climate Change. Historically, systems designed to monitor the performance of energy in data centres have been viewed as costly and possibly unnecessary. However, with businesses being put under pressure to improve energy efficiency these systems are becoming increasingly popular.
The evolution of short-term energy storage systems seems to be more prevalent too. Resilience is imperative in any Data Centre, uninterrupted power supply is essential. Traditionally, batteries have often been used to fulfil that need, however, with the pressing desire to look towards new greener technologies, there is an increase in ‘battery free’ storage solutions available in the market. These range from the already established ‘flywheel’ technology to the latest innovations using capacitors.
There have been huge changes in Information Technology over the last few years including the introduction of 5G, the cloud (private and public), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and IT Security. This increases the need for and demands on Data Centres. However, with the ongoing changes to Government regulations and the current skills shortages for data centre operators, as stated in the 2018 Uptime Institute Survey Research Survey, maybe it is time to review the complexities of data centres? The technology is available for smarter, simpler, more cost-effective solutions for our data centres, it just needs businesses to migrate from more traditional solutions and embrace new strategies.
The data centre industry is changing and continues to grow rapidly. Events like Data Centre World not only enable our team to network with others within the industry but ensure that we are up to speed with all the trends and challenges so that we are best placed to help fulfil our data centre clients’ needs.