2014 data centre predictions

Andy Oldfield, director of emerging markets at data centre infrastructure provider Panduit, recently provided a ten predictions for this market.

According to Oldfield software defined networks, cloud computing and the need for affordable solutions are among the top trends which people will see in 2014.

He made the following predictions for the next year when it comes to data centres:

1. Software Defined Network (SDN) with everything – now that all major vendors have an SDN offering (real or marketing ware) we expect to see the rise of the SDN data centre
2. Head in the Clouds – the continued availability of more Cloud services will drive more businesses to consider and subsequently adopt Cloud
3. Cloud on the cheap – whilst the mid to top end of the market is delivering increasing sophistication with automation and self-subscription, the ‘cheap’ end of the market providing basic no frills services will gain traction
4. Show me the money – as the business comes under increasing pressure to deliver an ROI on the investments in data mining and Big Data, will IT become information brokers offering customer insights for sale?
5. The Power Game – cost savings from consolidation and virtualisation will not be enough for data centre efficiency, more focus will be placed on the energy bill with efficient data centre cooling being the biggest game changer
6. Data, data, everywhere – as data mining and processing continue to rise, data volumes will continue to rise dramatically as will the east-west traffic within the data centre
7. Storage wars – rich media places a strain on the storage capability, expect to see commercial flash memory and virtualised storage solutions being adopted
8. ‘I feel the need, the need for speed’ – expect 40G to become the interface speed of choice for new core data centre deployments
9. I surrender! – there are now so many mobile devices in the workplace, will we finally surrender trying to control them and instead just focus on securing access and the data ?
10. Open for business – South Africa is still a market waiting to be developed, the connectivity to the global internet is there, the weakness of the Rand plays in favour of foreign investment, with a large English speaking population, is 2014 the year it all happens in the South African data centre?

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