Data centres unprepared for the future

A survey of data centres by Forbes Insights and Vertiv indicates that there is a lack of planning and preparation for the evolving needs of the data ecosystem.

Only 29% of the 150 data centre executives and engineers who were surveyed said that their facilities are meeting their current needs, while just 6% felt that data centres were updated in time to meet future needs.

‘The Modern Data Centre: How IT is Adapting to New Technologies and Hyperconnectivity’ survey results also reveal a stark contrast between executives and engineers. 11% of executives felt that data centres are updated ahead of current needs, but just 1% of engineers said the same.

“As today’s data centre evolves to incorporate enterprise, cloud and edge resources, thorough planning and foresight is needed to meet organisational computing requirements and business objectives,” said Martin Olsen, Vice President of Global Edge Systems for Vertiv.

“It is clear, however, that many organisations are lagging on that front. With that in mind, we anticipate considerable investment and activity among businesses trying to catch up and get ahead of the changes.”

Other notable results from the survey:

• 92% of CIOs and CTOs say their business will require faster download and response times in the near future.
• 63% say they have difficulty meeting bandwidth needs at all times.
• Security (45%) and bandwidth (43%) are the two areas most in need of upgrades.
• Security (43%), backup and emergency preparedness (33%), the ability to implement new technologies (28%) and bandwidth (27%) were the most commonly identified features that will give businesses a competitive advantage.
• Respondents are bullish on self-configuring and self-healing data centres. 24% said more than half of their data centres will be self-configuring by 2025, and 32% said more than half would be self-healing.
   

“In Asia, we are seeing growing interest and attention among organisations in futureproofing their critical infrastructure to adapt to the expanding connectivity and network requirements. But there is much work that still needs to be done. There is a need to re-examine existing strategies and continuously improve upon them to achieve business success,” said Tony Gaunt, Senior Director for Cloud, Hyperscale and Colocation at Vertiv in Asia and India.

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