The Data Center of Tomorrow

The data center of tomorrow will look much differently than the data center of today. That particular sentence should not be that surprising to anyone who’s been in an organization that has internal data centers.

Most organizations have been working on data center transformation projects over the last few years. With these transformation projects, companies have been looking for ways to implement automation, virtualization, cloud integration and other efficient technologies to allow the data center to become much more than a just a place to store servers for an organization.

I’ve worked with a number of organizations who have kicked off data center transformation projects. These companies have started their projects with an initial plan to replace aging or under-utilized servers and systems but quickly pivoted from a ‘equipment replacement’ project to a complete rethinking of how they use their data centers.

Many of these companies realized during their initial planning phases that they could do so much more with their data center. They realized the data center could be much more than a cost center if they took the time to think about how best to transform their data centers. By using virtualization, automation, converged systems and other technologies, data centers could be transformed into so much more than they thought it could be just a few short years ago.

With the introduction of virtualization, automation, Software Defined Data Center (SDCC) technologies, converged platforms, cloud systems and other technology platforms and systems, companies can now build out a data center that can deliver any type of functionality and feature the company needs today, tomorrow or in the future.

This new type of data center goes by many names but I tend to use the term “agile data center” to describe the new data center. The agile data center helps organizations deliver the right services in the right way (to the right people) but it also helps these companies contain costs while growing the capabilities available within the data center.

The organization’s that understand the value of the agile data center have changed the thinking about what the data center is and how the organization will use it. This ‘different’ thinking has caused the data center to undergo drastic changes. Some organizations are moving the majority of their data center functionality to the cloud while others are building hybrid systems with public and private cloud systems. Still others are completely gutting their data centers and replacing the systems with converged infrastructure to build container based systems within their data centers.

A few years ago if you asked IT professionals how to build a data center, they’d most likely give fairly straightforward answers based on the ‘old tried and true’ methods. Today if you ask that same question to those same IT professionals, you’ll most likely get as many different answers as you possibly could.

The data center of tomorrow is going to look so much different than the data center of today. Gone will be the bureaucratic processes and legacy systems. The data center will be a combination of internal and external systems that combine to create an agile, efficient and effective technology delivery platform.

The data center of tomorrow will be an agile data center.

This post is brought to you by Symantec and The Transition To The Agile Data Center.