Data Centers: Top Issues for the Next Five Years

Data Centers: The next five years

Last week at the annual Gartner Data Center Conference in Las Vegas, key analysts overviewed the most important issues that data centers face in the next five years. As expected, rising energy costs and the movement toward “green” solutions was a primary topic, as was social networking technology. But there were several other hot topics which the responsible network operations professional should be pursuing.

Below is our take on eight of the top 10 issues, as raised by Gartner. As a refresher, the top 10 issues were virtualization; the data deluge; energy and green IT; complex resource tracking; consumerization of IT and social software; unified communications; mobile and wireless; system density; mashups and portals; and cloud computing.

1. Virtualization – As virtualization technologies continue to advance, adoption is accelerating. Savvy data centers have already begun implementing virtualized servers, and this growing trend is here to stay for a variety of reasons including dynamic server load management, a need to reduce power consumption, and fast growing network complexity.
2. The data deluge – Not a new issue, albeit an accelerating one, the vast amount of data that traverses today’s networks creates a variety of problems, from storage management to throughput to monitoring. And here’s the kicker…the problem will only continue to expand over time. Faster and more efficient network infrastructures (10G today, 40G and later 100G in the future) will help with throughput. Gartner’s automated tiering idea for storage holds water strategically, but not all data centers are poised to implement it in the near term. Monitoring is particularly concerning, as higher bandwidth tools are required, yet virtualized servers and applications can be a challenge to pinpoint for monitoring in dynamic environments. Advanced capabilities for data/traffic aggregation and filtering are not only “nice to have” in virtualized environments, but a must.
3. Energy and green IT – Not much to say that you haven’t already heard. When it comes right down to brass tacks, this is a cost saving move, and fortunately (for your corporate communications division), it can be leveraged for some positive PR. Given current global issues related to energy costs and environmental concerns, this trend is here to stay.
4. Consumerization of IT and social software – This is an issue that has grown significantly over the past year or two, and one that Gartner has said will continue this accelerated growth path over the next several years. Consumers are very interested in new technologies, and especially in the ability to control their own user experience. Coupled with a growing trend toward a distributed workforce, work-from-home privileges, and the vast volume of unstructured data that result from social web-based applications, we see consumerization as inevitable (and in some respects, a good thing).
5. Unified communications - UC has been touted as the grand vision for bringing all communications media together, and it most certainly has its benefits, idealistically. That said, the growing trend toward digitization of communications is a prerequisite to truly achieving this vision. Kudos to Cisco and other thought leaders in this area, because as we analyzed in our post about the Net Generation, real-time and cross-platform (even cross media) integration is exactly the type of capabilities the younger sect of the population desires.
6. 

   Mobile devices like the Android now function like mini-computers

   Mobile and wireless – Continuing on the idea that the younger generation wants pervasive connectivity and interaction, mobile and wireless are growing in importance by the day. This is yet another way that social technologies are forcing our hand at considering new strategies for accommodating user needs. Coupled with the desire for “real time everything”, we have seen mobile phones advance to the point where they can serve as mini computers. The key issues then are how to secure devices that are not physically attached to the network itself, how to accelerate performance over time as mobile network speed increases, and how to properly provision devices and connections.  Brace yourselves, because the complexities that this will pose may not even all be known as of today.

7. Mashups and portals – Both similar in nature, in that they serve important content aggregation purposes, mashups and portals offer different challenges due to the nature of how they work. Of particular concern to us is the mashup concept, where not only content but code can be aggregated. The obvious problem is that you risk exposing yourself to untrusted code, not to mention potential copyright issues related to syndicating content that is not authorized for distribution and/or republication. Since browsers were not designed with mashups in mind, this is an issue that absolutely cannot be overlooked from a security standpoint.
8. Cloud computing – With all of the cost and efficiency benefits that cloud computing offers, cloud security remains a wild card. Two of the most common arguments about cloud security center around the access / authorization process and storage / transmission of sensitive data. Access can be a problem for anything that falls outside of your physical environment, but that is a lesser concern in our eyes than securing the actual traffic stream that transmits across the ultimate cloud…the Internet. It will be fun to watch how this all plays out in the coming months and years.

So there you have it, our take on eight of the 10 issues that Gartner said will be the most important to data centers heading into the second decade of this century.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the issues and our commentary. Feel free to agree or disagree. Debates can be very useful in helping hone our viewpoints on all of these issues, so I truly hope this post sparked a new idea or thought for you.