Three Upcoming Data Center Trends for 2017

Companies are fast turning from on-premise data centers to hyperscale data centers in the cloud. Between 6 and 7% of the world’s data centers are already in the cloud, but predictions indicate that by 2020, up to 67% of the world’s data workload will be processed by cloud-based data centers. As data centers make the shift, companies will need to make significant changes to allot for the necessary increases in power, bandwidth, efficiency and security required by both the public and private industries.

Presently, the public cloud’s growth is far outpacing that of the private cloud, thanks to improvements in efficiency, security and hyperscale. By 2020, 66.8% of the cloud’s workloads will likely be from the public sector, while the remaining 33.2% will be in private cloud data centers.

Here are a few trends to watch for as data makes the switch:

Energy Sources are Becoming Increasingly Green

To increase efficiency and reduce the power requirements for keeping cool, data centers will be built with higher frequently in colder climates. Additionally, to increase efficiency, new engineering designs will be unveiled that provide higher efficiency connections, use of power, and distribution.

Higher Power Density for Power Plants

As data centers move to the cloud, companies will buy computing power by the Kw/H. Cloud-based data centers require computing power in the range of 10 to 100 times of what they use currently. Increased utilization of Network Functions Virtualization will assist in improving server-side usage.

Increased Security 

Both physical and network security are crucial to operating data centers based in the cloud. There will likely be an increase in physical security systems over 2017 as companies attempt to maintain control over their data centers’ locations. Security at the chip level will also increase and improve defense capabilities against hackers and others.