Cloud Adoption Is Moving Faster Than Expected

The use of virtualized environments and private clouds to maximize resource utilization is happening faster than most industry experts had expected. These infrastructures are becoming very pervasive in data centers today.

The power consumed by servers, storage and networking equipment is becoming an increasingly important consideration in the data center, which will result in routine use of standards such as Energy Star from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Power Measurement (UL2640) from Underwriters Laboratories.

More organizations are taking advantage of virtualization, which makes it easier to manage loads within and across data centers in order to operate multiple, geographically dispersed data centers to enhance disaster recovery preparedness and achieve other operational benefits.

Capacity planning efforts that eliminate stranded power that is present in nearly every data center will begin to include power distribution and actual consumption as critical design factors, potentially resulting in an increase of up to 50 percent in server capacity.

Data center infrastructure management (DCIM) systems will become a mainstream—and even a must-have—tool. Early adopters already have proven its value along with an increased focus on power consumption as driving factors.

With the considerable overlap between the DCIM system used by the IT department and building management systems used by the facilities departments, organizations will begin migrating to DCIM as the primary platform for managing data centers and integrate other systems into it.

With the increased use of software as a service (SaaS) and other cloud-based services, DCIM functionality will also become popular as a service for monitoring and managing a data center’s environmental conditions and power consumption.

Data center automation will make a comeback. With the adoption of technologies like virtualization, DCIM, load-balancing and other sophisticated management systems, mitigating the risks caused by human error by managing critical functions in the data center through automation is once again desirable.

Increased automation will finally make it possible for data centers to participate in lucrative energy markets, making them a direct source of revenue for the organization.

As DC power becomes more common in new data centers owing to its greater efficiency, Thomas Edison will be vindicated for his preference for DC over AC.