Taking another climate moonshot, Microsoft has set out to crack a problem that will require a complete rethink of the world’s electric grids. Microsoft has made another big climate pledge. The company recently stated that it will work to power all its offices and data centers around the world with carbon-free energy 100 percent of the time by 2030. This is a very different – and much larger – problem… Read More
Data Center Solutions
AI for data center cooling: More than a pipe dream
Today, artificial intelligence can be found all around the data center – helping manage and protect the network, filtering alerts, and moving workloads. However, the industry has been slow to apply AI to the problems of operational technology, rather than IT. And specifically, to the realm of the data center cooling system, sometimes responsible for as much as a third of the overall power consumption of a server farm. You… Read More
7 Colocation Trends to Watch in 2021
Customers with legacy workloads and stringent compliance requirements are making colocation a component of their IT strategies, alongside cloud. Cloud repatriation, for example, is landing workloads in colocation provider’s data centers. In addition, colocation has become a springboard to the cloud for customers who want to move IT assets off site but aren’t quite ready to commit to public cloud platforms. Colocation is also getting a boost from edge… Read More
The Future of Data Centers in a Post Covid-19 World
Not since the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic has the world experienced such a profound public health crisis leading to transformational economic and social dislocation. The measures taken to suppress the virus have almost brought the global economy to a shuddering halt and affected many aspects of individuals and business’ daily lives. It has also made us all aware of the sheer importance of the Internet and web-enabled personal and business… Read More
Edge computing and the Impact on Cloud: Cannibalization or Iteration?
There continues to be a conversation around what the emergence of edge computing will mean for the wider cloud computing and infrastructure services market. In this article, we take a close look at the recent predictions from a Forrester Research analyst and compare with similarly dubious commentary from a Gartner analyst a few years back. Forrester Research. Forrester claims edge computing will hit an inflection point in 2021 and its… Read More
Remote Hands: Why it’s more than a trend with smart Data Centers
Companies used to send their IT workers to colocation centers to perform routine maintenance on their hardware. As a result of COVID-19, companies have had to address the health and well-being of their employees in very specific ways. Over the last 12 months, there has been a 35 percent increase in Remote Hands services. While it used to be considered an add-on luxury at times, remote hands services have… Read More
Colocation vs. Cloud: What are the Key Differences?
Some might use the terms private cloud and colocation interchangeably, but they refer to two completely different things. The main distinction between colocation vs. cloud lies with functionality. A colocation facility operates as a data center that rents floor space to an organization that has outgrown its own data center, whereas the private cloud enables designated users within an organization to act as tenant administrators. Simply put, an organization can… Read More
Hybrid Cloud and the Colocation Industry
Why Hybrid Cloud Is Central to the Colocation Industry’s Future As public clouds grow more sophisticated, it becomes harder and harder for data center providers to build compelling offerings by selling rack space. It’s no secret that colocation providers have for years been facing a critical challenge from public clouds. As public cloud platforms like Azure and AWS grow ever more sophisticated (not to mention cheaper), it becomes harder and harder… Read More
The Top Five Data Center Industry Trends in 2021
Data centers are the foundation of the digital world. Without them, there would be limited growth capacity in Cloud computing, IoT, 5G, Big Data, and AI. As the sheer amount of data generated grows exponentially, so does the need for innovation in data center technology. “As the data gets heavier and denser, it gets harder to move,” said Chris Sharp, CTO of Digital Realty, one of the largest data center… Read More
What Will the Data Center Market Rebound Look Like in 2021?
End-user spending on the global data center market is projected to reach $200 billion in 2021, an increase of 6% from 2020, according to the latest forecast from Gartner, Inc. Despite a 10.3% decline in data center infrastructure spending in 2020 due to restricted cash flow during the pandemic, the data center market is still expected to grow year-over-year through 2024. “The priority for most companies in 2020 is keeping the lights… Read More