According to a new forecast from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker, total spending on IT infrastructure products (server, enterprise storage, and Ethernet switches) for deployment in cloud environments is expected to total $46.5 billion in 2017 with year-over-year growth of 20.9%. Public cloud datacenters will account for the majority of this spending, 65.3%, growing at the fastest annual rate of 26.2%. Off-premises private cloud environments will represent 13% of cloud IT infrastructure spending, growing at 12.7% year over year. On-premises private clouds will account for 62.6% of spending on private cloud IT infrastructure and will grow 11.5% year over year in 2017.

Worldwide spending on traditional, non-cloud, IT infrastructure is expected to decline by 2.6% in 2017 but nevertheless will account for the majority, 57.2%, of total end user spending on IT infrastructure products across the three product segments, down from 62.4% in 2016. This represents a faster share loss than in the previous three years. The growing share of cloud environments in overall spending on IT infrastructure is common across all regions.

In cloud IT environments, spending in all three technology segments is forecast to grow by double-digits in 2017. Ethernet switches and compute platforms will be the fastest growing at 22.2% and 22.1%, respectively, while spending on storage platforms will grow 19.2%. Investments in all three technologies will increase across all cloud deployment models – public cloud, private cloud off-premises, and private cloud on-premises.

Long-term, IDC expects spending on off-premises cloud IT infrastructure will grow at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.0%, reaching $51.9 billion in 2021. Public cloud datacenters will account for 82.1% of this amount growing at a 12.1% CAGR while spending on off-premises private cloud infrastructure will increase at a CAGR of 11.7%. Combined with on-premises private cloud, overall spending on cloud IT infrastructure will grow at an 11.7% CAGR and by 2020 will surpass spending on non-cloud IT infrastructure. Spending on on-premises private cloud IT infrastructure will grow at a 10.8% CAGR, while spending on non-cloud IT (on-premises and off-premises combined) will decline at a 2.7% CAGR during the same period. 

New data from Synergy Research Group shows that just 20 metro areas account for 59% of worldwide retail and wholesale colocation revenues.

Ranked by revenue generated in Q3 2017, the top five metros are Washington, New York, Tokyo, London, and Shanghai, with those five metros alone accounting for 26% of the worldwide market. The next 15 largest metro markets account for another third of the worldwide market. Those top 20 metros include ten in North America, four in the EMEA region and six in the APAC region. Across the 20 largest metros, retail colocation accounted for 72% of Q3 revenues and wholesale 28%. In Q3 Equinix was the market leader by revenue in eight of the top 20 metros and Digital Realty would be the leader in five more if a full quarter of the acquired DuPont Fabros operations were included in its numbers. Other colocation operators that featured heavily in the top 20 metros include 21Vianet, @Tokyo, China Telecom, CoreSite, CyrusOne, Global Switch, Interxion, KDDI, NTT, SingTel and QTS.

Over the last four quarters colocation revenue growth in the top five metros outstripped growth in the rest of the world by two percentage points, so the worldwide market is slowly being concentrated more in those key metro areas. Top 20 metros with annualized growth rates of 15% or more (measured in local currencies) were Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong and Washington/Northern Virginia. All four saw strong growth in both the retail and wholesale segments of the market, though growth in wholesale tended to be higher. Chicago also saw very strong growth in wholesale revenues, though in this metro retail colocation growth was relatively weak.

“While we are seeing reasonably robust growth across all major metros and market segments, one number that jumps out is the wholesale growth rate in the Washington/Northern Virginia metro area,” said John Dinsdale, a Chief Analyst and Research Director at Synergy Research Group. “It is by far the largest wholesale market in the world and for it to be growing at 20% is particularly noteworthy. The broader picture is that data center outsourcing and cloud services continue to drive the colocation market, and the geographic distribution of the world’s corporations is focusing the colocation market on a small number of major metro areas.”

Data centre construction market in rival Frankfurt is ‘overheating’.

Brexit may be forcing banks to contemplate moving outside of London but the capital is set to continue to lead demand for data centres in Europe, despite ranking as the third most expensive city to build data centres in the world after New York and San Francisco.

According to the Data Centre Cost Index 2017 from leading professional services company, Turner & Townsend, demand for data centres in London is outstripping supply from contractors and has driven up construction costs by 4.1 percent.

The Index analyses input costs – including labour and materials – and compares the cost of both new build and technical fit out projects across 18 established data centre markets worldwide.

Foreign investment and the growth of cloud services providers are key factors fuelling the growth of data centres in London.  In the rival city of Frankfurt, the construction market for data centres is classified as ‘overheating’ due to a high number of projects and intense competition for physical resources and labour driving prices up. 

As well as being a major financial hub, Frankfurt benefits from a high density of network service providers, is home to the world’s largest internet exchange and is considered a gateway to eastern and central Europe. Ahead of Brexit, the city is seeing increased demand for data centre space.

The Index reveals the significant construction disparities that exist across Europe.

Amsterdam, Paris and Stockholm have new build data centre construction costs which are up to 10 percent lower than London. 

A key construction trend throughout Europe – and one set to continue in 2018 – is the prominence of UK and Ireland-based contractors securing projects across mainland Europe, particularly where local data centre expertise is not available on a large scale.

Contractors delivering new build facilities in Frankfurt can expect to command margins of up to 15 percent, while average margins for new build in London are 6.5 percent.  

Dan Ayley, Director, Hi-technology and manufacturing at Turner & Townsend said: “Despite Brexit headwinds, London retains its title as Europe’s leading data centre hub with approximately double the space and usage requirements of rival Frankfurt.  This is set to continue in 2018 as high construction costs for new build facilities in both cities reflect the buoyancy of these markets and growing labour shortages.

“Data is one of the world’s most valuable commodities and in European hubs, data centre demand is being driven by the rapid adoption of cloud services and the emergence of business models based around the Internet of Things.  This in turn is increasing competition to provide space at a lower cost and investors, developers and operators need certainty that they are building at the most competitive price. Against this backdrop they must proactively review and benchmark cost trends to be able to assess opportunities at a regional and global level.”

New York and San Francisco are the most expensive places to build data centres in the world with construction costs in these cities as much as 25 percent higher than other established data centre markets. 

As one of the fastest growing data centre markets in the world, Dublin was ranked as one of the most cost-effective locations to build, but cost inflation in 2018 is anticipated to rise to 8 percent.  While tax incentives remain attractive to operators, the city’s shortage of available power continues to present construction challenges.

Full-year combined EMEA ACV reaches €12.2 billion, up 3 percent on prior year.

The EMEA sourcing market rebounded in the final quarter of 2017, with double-digit growth in both traditional and as-a-service contracting values over the previous quarter, according to the findings of the 4Q17 EMEA ISG Index™ released by Information Services Group (ISG) (Nasdaq: III), a leading global technology research and advisory firm.

Data from the EMEA ISG Index™, which measures commercial outsourcing contracts with annual contract value (ACV) of €4 million or more, reveal the EMEA market, which fell sharply in the third quarter after starting the year strongly, rebounded in the fourth quarter, up 27 percent sequentially. Year-over-year, however, EMEA, was flat with the prior year, with combined fourth-quarter ACV of €3 billion in 2017. Traditional sourcing, at €1.9 billion, was down 11 percent versus the prior year, while as-a-service sourcing, at a record €1.1 billion for the region, was up 27 percent.

For the full year, EMEA generated €12.2 billion in ACV, up 3 percent against 2016. Traditional sourcing ACV of €8.3 billion was down 8 percent, but as-a-service sourcing soared 41 percent, to €3.9 billion, as demand for cloud-based services accelerated across the region.

The rise of as-a-service sourcing was driven by demand for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). While Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) ACV of €900 million was flat for the year, IaaS ACV soared 58 percent versus the prior year, reaching €3 billion. In contrast, traditional sourcing ACV declined for the fourth consecutive year, despite a slight increase in the number of contracts. Although ITO values, at €6.5 billion, remained steady, BPO ACV in the region fell to €1.8 billion, its lowest level in a decade.

Globally, the market also saw a strong final quarter, with ACV for the combined market establishing a new record at €34.6 billion. Global trends reflect those in EMEA, with newer technologies continuing to gain momentum. As-a-service continued to reach new highs on a global scale, overtaking traditional sourcing in the Americas and Asia Pacific in the fourth quarter, as businesses spend more on cloud-based technology to drive digital transformation.

Market Insights

Looking at traditional sourcing by geography, 2017 saw a mix of performance across the region.

Despite uncertainty around Brexit, the UK saw sourcing activity and ACV grow in 2017. This follows the broader trend of organizations entering into higher numbers of smaller-value contracts, as they look to take a more agile approach to sourcing. The 206 contracts and €3.2 billion in ACV were both up 18 percent year on year, albeit on a soft compare with 2016, the UK’s weakest year in a decade.

France, despite a dip in the fourth quarter of 2017, posted annual ACV growth of 8 percent. The number of contract awards, although down very slightly on the previous year, remains strong, at 62. In contrast, Southern Europe ACV plummeted more than 70 percent to its lowest level in five years.

With fewer large deal awards, ACV in DACH fell 16 percent in 2017. The 165 contracts signed was also down compared with the previous year, by 13 percent. The continuing uncertainty following the elections in Germany pulled the market down in the second half of 2017.

An absence of large deals in the Nordics region resulted in a decline in ACV of 18 percent, despite contract numbers remaining steady. 

Sector Breakdown

All industry sectors in EMEA demonstrated growth in as-a-service ACV in 2017, while traditional sourcing performance varied.

Financial Services dominated in EMEA during 2017. Combined ACV in the sector reached €3.4 billion, an increase of 21 percent compared with 2016 levels. As-a-service ACV hit €700 million in Financial Services, a year-on-year increase of 40 percent.

The Business Services sector mirrored the performance of as-a-service contracting in Financial Services, also recording AVC of €700 million and a 40 percent increase compared with the prior year.

In contrast, Manufacturing’s combined ACV fell 21 percent in 2017, pulled down by a steep decline in traditional sourcing, and despite a 50 percent increase in as-a-service values. Recent trends indicate significant spending on supply chain optimization in the manufacturing sector. Connected devices supported by edge computing, IoT, and data analytics will increasingly become a major focus in the manufacturing sector.

Forecast

Steven Hall, partner and president, ISG, said: “Despite a dip in the third quarter of 2017, the market recovered in the final quarter and demonstrated steady overall performance for the year. It is especially heartening to see the adoption of cloud-based services accelerate across the region, following a slow start in previous years. European businesses are seeing the potential of new technologies to help them on their digital transformation journeys, while reducing costs and improving agility. Macroeconomic uncertainty across Europe makes the business of predictions tricky. Nonetheless, the trend towards as-a-service is one we can expect to see accelerating over the next 12 months, with consistent growth of 20 percent or higher for the as-a-service market.” 

Continued strong demand driving investor appetite in Europe.

The data centre sector is seeing record investment levels as investors seek exposure to the record market growth in Europe. This investment is driven by take-up of colocation power hitting a Q3 YTD record of 86MW across the four major markets of London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Paris, according to global real estate advisor, CBRE.

 There is also a substantial amount of new supply across the major markets as developers look to capture demand in a sector where speed-to-market is still key. The four markets are on course to see 20% of all market supply brought online in a single year. This 20% new supply, projected at 195MW for the full-year, equates to a capital spend of over £1.2 billion.

 London has been centre-stage for European activity in 2017, its 41MW of take-up in the Q1-Q3 period represents 48% of the European total and dampened any concerns over the short-term impact of Brexit on the market. London was also home to two key investment transactions in Q3 as Singapore’s ST Telemedia acquired full control of VIRTUS and Iron Mountain acquired two data centres from Credit Suisse, one of which is in London.

CBRE projects that the heightened market activity seen so far in 2017 will continue into Q4 in three forms:

A continuation of strong demand, including significant moves into the market from the Chinese cloud and telecoms companies. Further new supply; CBRE is projecting that 80MW new supply will come online in Q4, including several brand-new companies such as datacenter.com, KAO and maincubesOngoing investment activity, with at least one major European investment closed out by the year-end.  

Mitul Patel, Head of EMEA Data Centre Research at CBRE commented: “2017 has been a remarkable year for colocation in Europe and, with 2018 set to follow-suit, any thoughts that 2016 might have been a one-off have been allayed. We have entered a ‘new-norm’ for the key hubs in Europe, where market activity is double what we have been accustomed to in the pre-2016 years.

“Given this ongoing market activity, it is no surprise to see so many investors wanting a piece of the action in Europe. As demand for data centre capacity continues to entice investors, the pool of available companies and assets diminishes. Consequently, those looking to deploy capital in Europe will need to act decisively, leading to more M&A investment in the coming year, beginning in Q4.

“Furthermore, the low cost of capital available to large data centre developers, and a shift from private equity to more longer-term institutional and infrastructure investors, will mean that both investment volumes and prices paid will remain at historically high levels.”

For the 2018 events, we’re taking our title literally, so the focus is on each of the three strands of our title: DATA, CENTRE and TRANSFORMATION.

The DATA strand will feature two Workshops on Digital Business and Digital Skills together with a Keynote on Security. Digital transformation is the driving force in the business world right now, and the impact that this is having on the IT function and, crucially, the data centre infrastructure of organisations is something that is, perhaps, not as yet fully understood. No doubt this is in part due to the lack of digital skills available in the workplace right now – a problem which, unless addressed, urgently, will only continue to grow. As for security, hardly a day goes by without news headlines focusing on the latest, high profile data breach at some public or private organisation. Digital business offers many benefits, but it also introduces further potential security issues that need to be addressed. The Digital Business, Digital Skills and Security sessions at DCT will discuss the many issues that need to be addressed, and, hopefully, come up with some helpful solutions.

The CENTRES track features two Workshops on Energy and Hybrid DC with a Keynote on Connectivity. Energy supply and cost remains a major part of the data centre management piece, and this track will look at the technology innovations that are impacting on the supply and use of energy within the data centre. Fewer and fewer organisations have a pure-play in-house data centre real estate; most now make use of some kind of colo and/or managed services offerings. Further, the idea of one or a handful of centralised data centres is now being challenged by the emergence of edge computing. So, in-house and third party data centre facilities, combined with a mixture of centralised, regional and very local sites, makes for a very new and challenging data centre landscape. As for connectivity – feeds and speeds remain critical for many business applications, and it’s good to know what’s around the corner in this fast moving world of networks, telecoms and the like.

The TRANSFORMATION strand features Workshops on Automation and The Connected World together with a Keynote on Automation (Ai/IoT). IoT, AI, ML, RPA – automation in all its various guises is becoming an increasingly important part of the digital business world. In terms of the data centre, the challenges are twofold. How can these automation technologies best be used to improve the design, day to day running, overall management and maintenance of data centre facilities? And how will data centres need to evolve to cope with the increasingly large volumes of applications, data and new-style IT equipment that provide the foundations for this real-time, automated world? Flexibility, agility, security, reliability, resilience, speeds and feeds – they’ve never been so important!

Delegates select two 70 minute workshops to attend and take part in an interactive discussion led by an Industry Chair and featuring panellists - specialists and protagonists - in the subject.  The workshops will ensure that delegates not only earn valuable CPD accreditation points but also have an open forum to speak with their peers, academics and leading vendors and suppliers.

There is also a Technical track where our Sponsors will present 15 minute technical sessions on a range of subjects.  Keynote presentations in each of the themes together with plenty of networking time to catch up with old friends and make new contacts make this a must-do day in the DC event calendar.   Visit the website for more information on this dynamic academic and industry collaborative information exchange.

This expanded and innovative conference programme recognises that data centres do not exist in splendid isolation, but are the foundation of today’s dynamic, digital world. Agility, mobility, scalability, reliability and accessibility are the key drivers for the enterprise as it seeks to ensure the ultimate customer experience. Data centres have a vital role to play in ensuring that the applications and support organisations can connect to their customers seamlessly – wherever and whenever they are being accessed. And that’s why our 2018 Data Centre Transformation events, Manchester and Surrey, will focus on the constantly changing demands being made on the data centre in this new, digital age, concentrating on how the data centre is evolving to meet these challenges.

www.dct.events

Trend #1: Datacenter management as a service (DMaaS) becomes mainstream

DMaaS, which first entered the market in late 2016, goes beyond DCIM as a service. It is part of a long-term evolutionary change toward integrating physical datacenter infrastructure management with many other services, including – but not limited to – IT workload management, energy management, connectivity and business costing. It is delivering some of the benefits of DCIM but with lower barriers by offering a simplified, low-touch and low-cost (or at least opex-based) alternative.

Based on DCIM software, these services aggregate and normalize monitored data via a gateway on-premises. The data is encrypted and sent to a provider’s cloud, where it is anonymized, pooled and analyzed, often using machine learning technology. In 2018, we expect the application of deep neural networks will begin. DMaaS also ties into remote and on-premises maintenance and fix services, enabling a full-service business model for suppliers.

DMaaS does not yet match the breadth of capabilities available from traditional DCIM, but over time, we expect it will go further, enabling peer benchmarking, 'guaranteed' outcomes as a service, and the leasing of assets with maintenance contracts - assets as a service. DMaaS will increasingly take the datacentre world beyond DCIM, and beyond single-site, proprietary management.

Trend #2: Micro-modular datacenters will underpin a new wave of decentralised, distributed IT

Emerging demand for the Internet of Things and distributed cloud architectures will necessitate the build-out of greater IT capacity closer to industrial environments and around the edges of carrier networks, to address increasing data volumes and to mitigate the cost of subpar response times.

The need to optimise IT services and next-generation networks, and to connect myriad machines and sensors, will in many cases drive the need for new datacentre form factors -- self-contained, highly integrated and compact micro-modular datacenters, or MMDCs, that can be deployed in small spaces virtually anywhere.

MMDCs will be lights-out, requiring remote IT and datacenter management software, including for monitoring, workload management and energy efficiency. Managing and upgrading many distributed sites will often require a distributed "fabric" of software to manage replication, availability and integrity. This will likely comprise a range of distributed applications that will need to be managed by layers of middleware, orchestration and other automation tools.

While the market for MMDCs is nascent today, that could change with just a few major projects, which are most likely to happen in the telecommunications, financial services, and logistics and transport sectors.

Trend #3: The distributed, hybrid resiliency approach gains ground, but management is fragmented

As enterprise IT spreads its work and its data across a diverse, hybrid infrastructure, the interconnected ecosystem of systems and services requires ever more complex software and network engineering, and greater use of third parties. Some of the applications will be cloud native, but others will not be designed to take advantage of cloud architectures.

The result is that enterprises may now enjoy more function, and more availability, and at lower cost – but they may have also traded this for a loss in accountability, predictability and control. And when failures do occur, sometimes in a gradual, partial way, and at other times on a grand scale, stabilisation and recovery can take hours or days.

For 2018, especially as new edge services and systems are deployed, we expect resiliency of complex architectures to be a growing concern, with some operators and providers getting ahead with new orchestration, analysis and monitoring tools, and service providers under pressure to be more open and responsive. Public cloud providers, colocation companies and hosting companies, will increasingly be required offer more information and monitoring systems, as well as build in recovery services, if they are to capture the next stage of cloud deployments. 

Trend #4: Datacenters Will Be Increasingly Standardised and Industrialised

The way that datacentre operators design and construct facilities is changing, with prefabricated and modular designs in the ascendant. This is being driven by a variety of factors, including the rapid pace of change of IT as well as an overall drive for efficiencies through standardisation and industrialisation. This will shorten build times and result in lower cost facilities supported by novel power and cooling systems.

Different operators use prefabrication in varying ways. At the very top, hyperscalers and multi-tenant datacenter (MTDC) providers will maintain some highly custom engineering efforts but are increasingly standardizing across their new builds to seek both capital and operational efficiencies. The world’s largest MTDC operators and others install datacenter subsystems in a largely repeatable pre-integrated fashion in a bid to cut cost, speed up new capacity installations, and, consequently, to align capital outlays better with demand. Operations across standardised facilities become simplified, more automated (supported by DMaaS) and less prone to human error.

Small- and medium-sized operators, on the other hand, are gravitating toward taking semi-custom prefabricated facilities designs where suppliers have already undertaken most of the engineering effort. An analogy is how commercial aircraft can be configured and built-to-order within the boundaries of standardised design frameworks.

Trend #5: Non-hyperscale datacenters will seek to adopt open architectures

Hyperscalers deploy open source hardware and software designs to drive efficiencies and scale, and this is increasingly putting pressure on service providers, enterprises and MTDC operators to consider similar architectures.

While growth will continue to come mostly from hyperscalers for the foreseeable future, owing to challenges in procurement, test and certification, there have been a number of initiatives to facilitate adoption for non-hyperscalers including: an online ‘Marketplace’ run by OCP to procure equipment, colocation providers offering OCP-compliant space, and the emergence of system integrators, hardware OEM vendors and others building ‘end-to-end’ services around open-source hardware procurement and technical support.

Network service providers are also assessing open architectures as they begin to move core network components and other communication applications into private cloud architectures. Higher performance, increased architectural agility and efficiency and ability to scale-out are key requirements demanded by this industry as it moves toward cloud networks and 5G connectivity, and factors that may make open source designs attractive to this vertical. The proliferation of IoT and distributed workloads is another opportunity for open infrastructure as the industry re-thinks datacenter architectures at the edge.

Trend #6: The need for energy assurance will drive innovation in on-site power generation

Operators of mission critical facilities are growing increasingly concerned about their reliance on utility grids to provide highly available power, for reasons ranging from cyberterrorism threats to the effects of climate change, and including economic and sustainability goals. More companies are seeking power assurance beyond what utilities can provide. This will encourage more investment and innovation in new approaches to supplying and distributing power and storing energy in more localized and distributed ways.

Microgrids are an area of increasing activity, where multiple sources of electricity generation are connected and controlled by software to maintain a stable supply of power that is independent of the utility grid and to a set of local users.

Datacentres are also likely to increasingly be viewed as microgrids: they already have backup power generation (typically diesel generators) and are moving toward more software-driven power with more power sources. There is a clear movement inside datacenters toward exploiting existing redundant backup power sources, such as UPSs and generators, as well as adding some auxiliary capacity using renewable energy.

The recent application of battery technologies, such as Lithium-ion and Nickel-Zinc, as well as fuel-cell technologies in datacenters will enable more operators to explore strategies to deploy reserve power on-site for both operational and back-up power needs. Demand response and transactive energy systems are helping to justify investments in local energy generation, a trend that we expect will continue.

A hybrid cloud strategy effectively gives organisations the ability to rapidly develop and launch new applications, adopt agile ways of working and run workloads in whichever way best meets their specific needs.

For example, workloads that aren’t business-critical can be deployed externally, while those that hold sensitive customer data can continue to be run in-house in order to meet compliance requirements – an issue especially relevant for organisations in highly regulated sectors such as telecommunications, healthcare and financial services.

A hybrid cloud strategy also gives businesses the option to move workloads between environments based on cost or capacity requirements and application portability means they are not locked into one platform.

However, not all firms are embracing third party providers. The desire to innovate as fast as possible means that, when it comes to the decision of going with a public and private cloud, many businesses are building when they should be buying. But is that the right move?

Navigating cloudy skies

There is little doubt that a hybrid approach will be best bet for most organisations but the right mix of public and on premises cloud infrastructure is up to your business requirements.

As previously mentioned, if a business is heavily bound by compliance and regulatory constraints – and if they have the capacity to manage and maintain their own data centres –  then a lean towards private cloud is probably the right option. However, for the majority of organisations, the advantages offered by public cloud providers are simply too good to ignore.

For example, many businesses tout the cost-effectiveness and flexibility benefits that public cloud provides, while others want to be able to access new services, so are keen to tap into the fast pace of innovation that public cloud providers have become known for.

Outsourcing certain workloads also means organisations don’t have to deal with technical issues that may arise with the underlying platform, instead handing off that responsibility to a team of experts and freeing up time for their own developers to focus on other things.

Whilst the benefits of public cloud are clear, many businesses that still need private infrastructure are choosing to build rather than buying from the experts. A common misconception is that just because they can build, they should build. But building infrastructure that works and building infrastructure that really makes a difference to the business are two entirely different things.

Developing, managing and operating bespoke cloud infrastructure is hugely complex and a substantial proportion of organisations simply don’t possess the technical skills to be able to achieve their lofty aims by themselves.

Furthermore, in some cases it’s worth considering what you’re asking your developers to spend their time on. If you’re buying your cloud from someone else, the developers have the time to innovate higher up the stack and potentially make more meaningful contributions to the business.

In comparison, if your developers are tasked with the main build they will likely spend most of their time on the base layers, and have less opportunity to add value by building new tools and services.

This level of focus is unlikely to be attractive to potential hires. Experienced developers are not easy to come by and will be more attracted to companies that offer them opportunities to be creative and experiment with new services.

Speed also needs to be a consideration. Public cloud providers are known for innovating rapidly and rolling out new features on a regular basis, a characteristic which is extremely hard to replicate to the same level of quality with an in-house developed platform.

In or out?

So, what’s the answer? Should businesses be looking to leverage the innovation and speed-to-market benefits offered by public cloud providers, or should they aim to keep things in-house and maintain control over their workloads?

Unfortunately, the simple truth is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Organisations should consider what is the best option for them, depending on factors such as the type of data they hold and their performance needs.

But one thing we can be certain of is that attempting to build cloud infrastructure without the appropriate levels of planning, investment and – most importantly – expertise will cause more harm than good in the long run.

If an organisation can’t meet the demands, it makes more sense to outsource the job to third parties that have done this many times before using standardised tools and technologies. Very few businesses actually need to build and operate their own cloud infrastructure. Public cloud providers and vendors or specialist on premises cloud platforms can help to ease the strain, providing the skills, experience security and innovation to help businesses flourish.

If affected parties, such as customers, are not notified within 72 hours, companies risk fines of up to 4% of their global revenues. This short ‘window of responsibility’ is going to be a big reality check for many companies.

The real risk comes from the potential for significant brand damage if a breach is made public without a true understanding of the nature and impact of the breach. A well-known example of this is the TalkTalk notification a couple of years ago, where executives made the morally responsible decision to make public the loss of customer data, but without a true understanding of the facts of the attack. This led to huge losses in brand value, revenue and market valuation.

To avoid this scenario, but still comply with Article 33, many will need to make serious changes to their systems, operations and procedures to be capable of accurately communicating the details of a breach within the deadline GDPR imposes.

There is no silver bullet that can completely solve the complex problem of meeting GDPR’s breach reporting obligations. However, there are things that companies can do to prepare themselves.  Having the necessary tools, and collecting the right information, can ensure that when a breach occurs, analysts can investigate it quickly and conclusively and the organisation can respond appropriately.

A key asset in breach investigation is access to a packet-level history of network activity. Network History is invaluable because it shows, definitively, what happened. Moreover, access to a detailed source of Network History lets companies investigate security events more quickly, reducing the risk that an unexamined threat leads to a more serious breach.

Having access to Network History when you need it requires implementing specialised packet-capture and recording appliances – network recorders - at key points on your network. These network recorders access the network using a tap, or from the SPAN port on a switch or router – which makes them completely invisible on the network being monitored. This means the recorded data can be relied on as tamper-proof evidence of activity on the network – unlike log files and other evidence that could have been tampered with by the attacker.

These network recorders must be deployed and recording in “always on” mode in order to capture evidence of attacks. Deploying network recording after the fact is a little like turning on your CCTV camera after a burglary – it’s too late by then.

What You Might Not Know About Breach Management

While preparation is key to preventing the preventable, it’s also key to identifying and minimising loss should a breach occur. Companies that actively monitor their networks use tools such as Intrusion Detection (IDS), Behavioural Anomaly Detection, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to analyse traffic on the network and raise alerts when potentially malicious activity is detected.

But when it comes to investigating the alerts that are raised, these analytics tools don’t provide the level of detail needed to determine definitively what took place. They’ll tell you something happened, but you need to investigate the event much more deeply to understand what that event was and whether it’s serious or not. In the event of a breach, knowing for certain what happened, how it happened and what the impact is, and doing that quickly, is critical.

This is valuable information that can otherwise take months to compile from log files and metadata – much too slow and inconclusive a process to provide the insight needed for timely and accurate notification of the breach. With GDPR fast approaching, companies need to ensure they can get to the bottom of breaches quickly and communicate the details to affected parties within GDPR’s tight time constraints. Failure to meet these obligations could be extremely expensive – not just in fines, but in legal costs, lost customers and declining share value.

The Future of Assessment

No organisation is impenetrable. Being prepared to respond to a breach is becoming increasingly critical to all businesses. 2017 has been a year of major breaches, and the media attention they have attracted has caused many companies to start to think about whether they could respond to a breach adequately or not. The looming shadow of GDPR,vand the obligations it imposes,  is raising this issue even higher up the corporate agenda. Which is, of course, exactly what the regulation was designed to achieve – to get companies to take the issue of security more seriously.

With greater visibility into what is happening and what has already happened on their networks companies are far more breach ready. The evidence they need to quickly understand a breach and communicate accurately about it is at their fingertips. Which will not only help them to stay on the right side of the upcoming GDPR regulations, but also allow them to minimise the losses should they become the victim of a major breach in the future.

1.    Please can you provide a brief overview of Nlyte’s progress in the data centre industry to date?

Having been founded in 2004 in London, Nlyte Software not only established the data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) industry but has kept the capabilities of a modern DCIM solution that both increases efficiency in the data centre and bolsters the value of ITSM solutions. It has also consistently been named in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for DCIM, having most recently been named a ‘leader’ from 2014 onwards.

2.    DCIM is Nlyte’s main focus?

DCIM is Nlyte Software’s focus and is what the organisation has built its global client base of both large multinationals and smaller businesses around. However, Nlyte Software is also evolving its offering, building on the industry benchmark DCIM solution to offer data centre service management (DCSM) solutions. Whereas DCIM helps an organisation manage data centre infrastructure, our DCSM solution goes beyond infrastructure to empower data centre professionals to perform their job functions more efficiently – all while synchronising information and activities to other systems that depend on accurate data centre information. In essence, DCSM transcends DCIM to incorporate workflows and integration into other critical systems. As the needs of infrastructure managers change, Nlyte Software has continued to evolve its platform to meet their needs.

3.    Can you talk us through the DCIM portfolio, starting with the flagship Enterprise offering?

Our Nlyte Enterprise solution is our flagship offering. It serves mid-sized and large enterprises whose desire to manage their physical computing infrastructure more closely and efficiently. It supports audit, regulatory and fiscal compliance with regulations such as HIPPA, SOX, SCI and DCOI, and captures changes to the data centre automatically to improve data accuracy and reliability. It actually improves the financial management of IT assets and reduces operational costs by delivering an accurate reflection of asset inventory.

Nlyte Software’s core capabilities provide unmatched insight and visibility in near real-time. Additionally, Nlyte Software’s 50 plus integration connectors to key partners such as BMC, ServiceNow and HPE, etc., provide unmatched integration and increased ROI for organisations that use it.

4.    And then there’s Energy Optimizer?

Nlyte Energy Optimizer (NEO) provides advanced monitoring and alarming capabilities to track vital energy metrics across data centres.

NEO’s benefits include proactively ensuring better uptime and redundancy, optimum power and cooling efficiency, elimination of inefficient resources – while also confidently raising centre temperatures to reduce costs – easier facility and IT personnel collaboration, reductions in energy costs, flexibility and insight to prove SLAs for tenants/customers, and power and environmental information to ITSM systems for more accurate operations and costing.

5.    And Platinum?

Nlyte Platinum combines the breadth of Nlyte Enterprise offerings with the depth of Nlyte Energy Optimizer capabilities.

The modern and secure web-based architecture ensures the solution can scale with the growth of organisations, while providing a third party tested (Veracode VerAfied) secure environment. The architecture includes a built-in communication framework with pre-built connectors that enable easily integrate with other facility and IT investments to ensure maximum value with the lost total cost of ownership in the industry.

6.    And Colocation?

Nlyte Colocation was created especially for multitenant data centres to securely monitor and report power, space and capacity for hundreds of tenants.

It enables colocation providers, both wholesale and retail, to securely monitor and report power, space and capacity for hundreds of tenants. The multitenant architecture ensures that tenants can securely view their own actual power and space usage within the colocation facility – in real-time and over time.

7.    And Hyperscale?

Nlyte Hyperscale was created for large organisations that require a very highly scalable solution that supports massive amounts of change across large numbers of assets.

Hyperscale provides a robust architecture and environment for firms that demand incredible scale. Nlyte Hyperscale Platinum and Enterprise Editions support the management of millions of assets and accommodate tens of thousands of changes a month.

8.    And System Utilization Monitoring?

Nlyte System Utilization Monitoring extends real-time monitoring throughout the data centres from the facilities layers and across the IT stack, providing the first end-to-end real-time utilisation view.

It constantly monitors system utilisation at the global, location and room levels to provide complete oversight, identifies specific underutilised servers and ‘Ghost Servers1 to raise utilisation rate, and functions in conjunction with Nlyte Enterprise Edition to support reaching DCOI Server Utilisation objectives.

9.    Nlyte also offers Data Centre Service Management?

Yes, Nlyte Software offers a solution that goes beyond infrastructure to empower data centre professionals to perform their job functions more efficiently – all while synchronising information and activities to other systems that depend on accurate data centre information.

10.  Offering products to work with the BMC, HPE and ServiceNow ITSM solutions?

Yes. Integration is one of the reason organisations choose Nlyte Software over products of our competitors. We integrate with BMC, HPE and ServiceNow ITSM solutions as well as HPE One View, Cisco EnergyWise, Dell OpenManage Server Administrator and Intel Data Centre Manager (DCM) which not only improves operational efficiency but improves the ROI of those systems.

11.  How does the Nlyte product help to improve ITSM information?

Deploying robust DCIM solutions is only half the job. Our software has pre-built connectors to leading ITSM providers such as BMC, HPE and ServiceNow to enable clients to receive the full benefits of a well-integrated modern DCIM suite. This is the most effective and efficient way to close the gap between IT and facilities management. This enables information and processes to flow bidirectionally between infrastructure teams and ITSM organisations.

12.  And ITSM processes?

Nlyte Software supports processes such as keeping CMDB information updated and accurate.  It also ties in with change management processes so organisations get seamless changes and more accurate information about who, how and how long those changes are taking.

13.  And ITSM measurement?

With integration between Nlyte Software and ITSM, organisations can measure the real cost of infrastructure maintenance and get better insight into the location of resources and dependencies associated with those assets. Overall this helps in reducing downtime and gives greater transparency to ITSM systems.

14.  Nlyte also offers a range of services to support the product portfolio?

Support and services are a key reason why organisations choose Nlyte Software and why the company has a 98% customer retention rate. Nlyte Software offers a broad range of services to ensure the success of our customers from experience deployment services to ongoing support, customers always have services resources available to them when they choose Nlyte Software.

15.  More generally, how can Nlyte help customers address the hybrid data centre infrastructure model (on-premise, Cloud, edge etc.)?

Strategically, we see the world going more hybrid all the time and in the future, we are rolling out solutions that will help our clients and prospects help understand their hybrid approach and strategy. We also see edge getting bigger, so we're going to be investing a great deal of time into our existing edge solution to ensure it stays on the front of change.  Ultimately, if organisations are going to keep up with the public cloud providers, they need to have modern technology like Nlyte Software supporting their operations whether in their own data centres or in colocation facilities. 

16.  And where do IoT and AI fit with the Nlyte offering?

IoT and AI are the future of the data centre and we are planning some big things in 2018. Our DCIM solutions currently allow companies to offer all the capabilities to handle the growing number of devices in the workplace. We’ll be building on this in the future to handle the increase in devices coming next year while our AI/machine learning integrated offerings are soon to market. Stay tuned.

17.  And how do you see DCIM fitting into the overall data centre automation and optimised management objective?

One of the biggest evolutions the data centre industry will experience will be the integration of AI and machine learning and automation. We are already taking steps towards a more automated data centre future with AI being tested across a number of different tasks and automation taking over from human processes in data centres across the world. As we enter 2018 we will see further integration, and will see these technologies leading the industry for the next century.

18.  Is it fair to say that DCIM 1.0 left many end users underwhelmed, whereas the latest DCIM software is receiving a much more positive response?

Most technologies go through a typical adoption curve.  There were many technology companies that jumped on the DCIM wave along the way with varying levels of value and success.  Given the market is now over 14 years old, many providers have left the market and companies like Nlyte Software, that is used by hundreds and hundreds of companies daily, are delivering solid positive experiences and ROI to organisations around the world.   

19.  And how do you see Nlyte’s position in the overall data centre market developing over time?

We see Nlyte Software as continuing to lead the DCIM market, providing solutions that will give organisations the tools to maximise their physical computing infrastructure investments. We will also be moving further into the telecommunication and fintech spaces offering organisations that battle tight budgets and growing IT estates solutions to best conquer their challenges.

20.  Specifically, what can we expect from Nlyte product-wise during 2018 and beyond?

2018 is going to be an exciting year. We’re investing in research and development to evolve the computing infrastructure market to reduce complexity and give back control. We will be working to give our customers full control of their IT assets. We will also be working with some of the largest IT vendors to deliver unique first of a kind machine learning and operational capabilities for infrastructure managers.

21.  And what about in terms of company growth – a bigger channel, different, expanded routes to market and the like?

Our main goal is to deliver value to organisations using Nlyte Software in a way that will provide them with the best value. We are continuing to expand our own presence worldwide, for instance with a new team and office in India, but we will also continue to invest in our partners as they help use bring the value of DCIM to a wider audience worldwide.

22.  What one or two pieces of advice would you give to someone evaluating DCIM solutions and their suitability to help on the journey towards digitalisation that seems to be the overriding objective right now?

There are a number of benefits in adopting a DCIM solution and if a prospective company is looking to install a DCIM strategy we suggest they talk to references just like themselves. There are many vendors who say they can deliver but, when they get down to it they don’t scale, are too hard to use or just don’t have a rich platform to provide value today and into the future.  Ask to talk to references who are similar to you.  We’d also suggest looking at DCIM as a journey – map out the milestones you have in the near term but also look where you want to be in the future – whether it’s tying into BMS or ITSM systems or implementing workflow.  A good DCIM solution like Nlyte Software will continue to provide growing value over time. 

Overcoming enterprise application challenges

As enterprise applications move to the cloud, companies are realising that traditional WANs were never architected for a dynamic internet-based environment. Indeed, IDC indicates that the increase in SaaS for business applications throughout the enterprise disrupts the prominence of conventional MPLS-based WANs. Backhauling traffic from the branch to the headquarters, and then to the internet and back again is inefficient and impairs application performance. As such, employees often find that their business applications run faster at home or on their mobile devices than in the office. Historically, the internet was not secure or reliable enough to meet business needs; it didn’t perform well enough to support latency-sensitive or bandwidth-intensive business applications.

With internet access redefining the economics of networking, the time is now for companies to revisit deploying broadband in the WAN – as long as concerns over performance, reliability and security can be addressed. An SD-WAN frees enterprises to embrace broadband and directly connect users to cloud applications from branch locations. This results in a superior user experience, assured application performance, and the security, reliability and visibility required to comply with business policies and intent, and centrally orchestrate and address issues as they arise.

Reflecting on last year

Before looking ahead to 2018, it’s important to consider the SD-WAN predictions for this year. In 2017, it was predicted that as SD-WAN adoption would gain ground and go mainstream, initial enterprise deployments would be hybrid, leveraging both MPLS and a complement of broadband connectivity. 2017 was also tipped to be the year that introduces SLAs for SD-WAN over pure broadband. Indeed, it forecasted that enterprise adoption of SD-WAN over pure broadband will accelerate dramatically as organisations realise that it's possible to deliver MPLS-equivalent quality of service and availability when combining any combination of transport, including consumer broadband connectivity.

When it comes to SD-WAN vendors and their offerings, 2017 was the year that the differences between SD-WAN vendors approaches were predicted to become more apparent. While SD-WAN offerings look similar, they are fundamentally quite different and at different maturity levels. Additionally, it was thought that 2017 would see the separation between the providers that deliver mature, scalable offerings and those that rushed to the market with a minimal, viable product in response to demand. It was also predicted that some vendors would also seek to deliver rudimentary support for nearly every function imaginable, while others would focus on core competencies and building partnerships and ecosystems to service chain best-of-breed functions, capabilities and services.

In 2017, it was also forecasted that geographically distributed enterprises will continue to require WAN optimisation – perhaps not for all locations and offices, but for a significant portion of their WAN traffic. It was predicted to become attractive to purchase WAN optimisation by-the-drip as an integrated service in an SD-WAN solution, versus buying it as a stand-alone product deployed at every location. Geographically distributed enterprises were also expected to seek to steer different types of internet traffic in different directions or paths based on business intent – and that deep visibility and control over internet traffic will become a critical requirement for SD-WAN deployments. Additionally, 2017 was predicted to bring early instances of machine learning-based and artificial intelligence innovations to networking.

Looking ahead to 2018

In 2018, it’s predicted that the following trends will impact enterprises and vendors in networking: 

1.     Enterprises adopt cloud-first WAN architectures
Today, most WAN traffic, to and from branch and remote sites, is destined for the cloud, either to SaaS services or applications hosted in an IaaS environment. The traditional WAN was architected for branch-to-data-centre traffic flows, not to efficiently support new cloud-driven traffic patterns. Starting in 2018, most enterprises will adopt a “cloud-first” SD-WAN architecture designed to efficiently and effectively support the ongoing evolution in their application mix

2.     The new WAN edge replaces the traditional branch router
Traditional routers are no longer the default choice for branch deployments. Routers are burdened by three decades of complexity and a cumbersome “CLI-first” device-by-device configuration paradigm. With SD-WAN as a foundation, a new class of centrally-orchestrated, application-driven WAN edge devices will replace traditional routers in the branch

3.     Cisco is no longer the safe, default choice for routing and switching
The move away from traditional Cisco router and switch architectures will not be confined to branch office deployments. In 2018, we will continue to see big share shifts in the data centre. Enterprises will be more inclined to deploy innovative networking technologies from vendors beyond Cisco, marking a favourable change for the overall networking ecosystem

4.     The new WAN edge enables improved security architectures
For years, enterprises have been hamstrung, forced to choose between backhauling all branch office traffic to one of several next gen firewall-equipped hubs or deploying a firewall at every branch site. In 2018, the new WAN edge empowers enterprises to make this decision on an application-by-application basis. Network managers can elect to breakout trusted traffic locally at the branch, divert to a cloud-based firewall service, which is sometimes called a web services gateway, or backhaul to a full security stack at a central location. Enterprise-grade SD-WAN solutions also enable enterprises to micro-segment traffic across the WAN, thereby containing the impact of any breach

5.     Machine learning enables the self-driving network
Machine learning will be used to complement automation and enable networking to move beyond traditional device-by-device CLI configuration toward intent-driven service orchestration. We will see this evidenced in new application classification techniques, learning and adaptive networking functions and powerful data analytics that turn terabytes of data into actionable insights and actions for network operators

6.     Cloud-based management becomes the default
For the last few years, the number of devices under cloud management has grown steadily, expanding beyond Wi-Fi to switching, and now to the new WAN edge. Cloud-based management and orchestration simplify initial deployment, provide better ongoing availability, and most importantly, are backed with web-scale storage and compute resources that enable analytics and machine learning-based techniques that would be difficult to support in most private enterprise environments

7.     One Virtual Network Function (VNF) is better than four
2018 will see more carriers rolling out universal CPE offerings – commodity x86 appliances with the ability to host virtual network functions from multiple vendors. While much of the hype in this market has been around service chaining an arbitrary mixture of these VNFs, as carriers and their customers gain more experience, it will become apparent that the fewer VNFs required, the better. Ultimately, one advanced SD-WAN-based VNF will provide all the networking services required in a typical branch site deployment. The value of universal CPE will centre on the ability for enterprises to select their preferred technology stack without switching out hardware, enabling them to move on from building an arbitrary franken-mixture of services

8.     More SD-WAN deployment options, spanning from DIY to fully managed
The initial wave of SD-WAN deployments have been spearheaded by early adopters willing to go it alone with DIY SD-WAN deployments which they configure, deploy and manage in-house. While an SD-WAN dramatically simplifies the branch over the traditional router-centric WAN, some enterprises prefer to outsource networking and will seek a fully managed solution. Others want deployment assistance, but then want to manage the network themselves. And others will want co-management. In 2018, enterprises will have more options to choose from with traditional VARs, system integrators and service providers all bringing to market new SD-WAN services that fill out the spectrum from DIY to fully managed

9.     The first SD-WAN-driven IPO
As SD-WAN hits mainstream, the largest independent SD-WAN vendors will likely be in a position to pursue an initial public offering. 2018 is likely to see one or more S1 filings in preparation for IPOs. For smaller players, it will be time to wrap-up and find a home under the wing of a larger and more established company. For those technologies acquired in 2017, it remains to be seen what aspects of the original products will be incorporated into the parent companies’ offerings, and which will be abandoned

Ultimately, 2018 will see the SD-WAN revolution show no signs of losing steam. It’s clear the changing requirements of the cloud-first enterprise will drive market growth, as well as enterprises moving away from traditional branch routers and towards an application-driven WAN edge. At the same time, underlying SD-WAN technologies will continue to innovate in terms of machine learning and security. Whether 2018 will be the year of the acquisition in the SD-WAN market remains to be seen, but organisations will continue to streamline WAN connectivity, employ broadband and dramatically simplify IT operations and lower costs in the year ahead.

*https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS42925117

In reality, data breaches continued to soar. A report from the Identity Theft Resource Center and CyberScout, the data risk management company, found that the number of data breaches in the US alone jumped 29 percent in the first half of 2017 compared to the corresponding period the year before. Across the world we have seen a raft of organisations  fall foul of extensively publicised security breaches , the consequences of which are often severe, not to mention the ongoing reputational damage.

The possibility of a fine being levied is always a significant concern to business leaders, and often leads to a focus of mind on the issue in question. In the case of the pending EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), for instance, the most severe penalty available for non-compliance is a fine of €20 million, or up to 4% of the preceding financial years’ total worldwide annual turnover , whichever is greater.

The reputational consequences caused by a data breach can also be as damaging; as serious fines attract negative media coverage and may deter prospective customers. The inability of the business to recover what has been lost by the breach can further compromise credibility. After all, while some cyber criminals steal data, others, notably including the propagators of ransomware, corrupt it and make it potentially worthless, even after a ransom may have been paid.

Putting a Plan in Place

In light of the above, how can businesses best go about protecting themselves against the consequences of cyber security breaches? Part of the answer is  ensuring the right security   practices and protocols are in place and are adhered to as best and normal behaviour.

Sometimes it is as simple as getting the latest security patches from vendors applied and tested across the company as soon as possible. Other times , it is more complex: making certain, for example, that sensitive or personal data that has been transitioned to the care of a cloud service provider is encrypted in-transit and the moment it lands rather than post-landing.

However, best practice data protection always needs to be about more than just applying a technological fix. While implementing the right systems is important, organisations must also instil a culture of security within the business so that employees understand the importance of data security  to mitigate employees putting the organisation at risk by the way they manage and handle data.

In an age where immediate and easy access to data is the norm, that is not straightforward. Businesses must ensure that employees never compromise security in exchange for being able to access the information they want, when they want it.

There is a need for education here. Consider the manager that must deliver a presentation the next day and decides to store it in multiple accessible locations to ensure access; on the company laptop, on a file-sharing application in the cloud and on a memory stick, perhaps, with the rationale that if one location fails, the others can serve as back-up.

Such an approach creates its own problems however – and users need to be made aware of the issues and concerns. If the laptop is left on a train or is left accessible whilst in use, it could be easy prey for anyone with the skill and inclination to break into it. The cloud-based file sharing application could potentially be compromised also (or indeed it could be that a free service gives THEM the right to have access), while USB sticks are frequently mislaid or subsequently shared as a convenient “hand-o-matic” file sharing tool. Simply by taking the data outside of the corporate infrastructure, you are bypassing all the security measures and potentially putting sensitive information at risk

It’s a clear demonstration of how so many businesses can make themselves vulnerable by effectively sleepwalking into data breaches. So, what’s the solution?

Technology should always be part of it. Anti-virus and anti-malware software needs to be implemented and kept up-to-date. Data leakage protection can also be put in place, providing electronic tracking of files, or putting systems in place that stop users arbitrarily dropping data out to cloud services. Adaptive authentication, in which risk-based multi-factor authentication helps ensure the protection of users accessing websites, portals, memory sticksor applications, also has an increasingly key role to play.

While technology is important,   countering data breaches is also about education. Businesses need to  re-enforce the message that employees need to take a personally responsible approach to managing and protecting data over which they have control. They must be aware of the potential security threats and do all they can to mitigate them - from taking good care of devices they use at work to making sure their passwords are strong. The battle against the cyber criminals will continue but if businesses are to fight back effectively, they need their employees onside and focused.    

Each new “next-generation” technology comes along with the promise of replacing or fixing everything that came before.  However, things have rarely turned out this way in reality.  In the 1990’s, client/server computing did not fully replace the mainframe, then web applications did not replace client/server applications and cloud is not predicted to replace all of our on-premise infrastructure any time soon.  For many companies, the adoption of newer technologies just adds another layer to be integrated, secured and managed and ultimately increases the complexity within the data centre.  With increased complexity comes a higher risk of system failure, a lower level of flexibility and much higher ongoing costs.

Much of this complexity has been exposed as a result of the increase in popularity of server virtualisation.  Widespread virtualisation of computing resources has given organisations a glimpse of what is possible when applications are no longer tethered to individual servers.  Server virtualisation introduced the world to a software-defined computing model where virtual machines are managed like files and can be moved around on demand, copied, backed up and restored with ease and with little care for the computing hardware underneath.  However, this flexibility comes at a price.  A complex storage area network (SAN) comprised of storage arrays and storage networking switches is required to enable many of server virtualisation’s best features such as virtual machine migration and high availability.  This combination of compute, storage and storage networking hardware came to be known as Three-Tier Architecture and is prevalent in almost all modern corporate data centres.  While the compute layer is software-defined, the other storage related layers are not.  The compute layer can be easily scaled by just adding more servers and balancing the virtual workloads across them.  A SAN cannot be scaled so easily.  The initial purchase of a SAN typically requires a complex sizing exercise and a good deal of foresight to make sure that it can accommodate both the business’ capacity and performance requirements for years to come.  When either of these capacity limits are reached, an expensive fork-lift upgrade is required, and the cycle starts again.  As new applications come on board, these limits can easily be reached well ahead of the expected life of the SAN.  Specialist skills are also required to implement and maintain a SAN and often operate within a separate IT management silo.

The public cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform learned a long time ago that they could not build their services using this traditional and complex three-tier data centre architecture.  These hyper-scale cloud companies do not rely on Storage Area Networks at all.  Instead they build up their infrastructure using small x86 servers with locally attached disks.  These small servers contribute their compute, memory and storage resources into the overall pool which is then consumed by the applications running on top.  Individual server nodes can and do fail regularly but the entire software-defined system is designed to expect failures and automated to work around them without affecting the availability of applications or the quality of service to customers.  Failed or obsolete nodes can easily be replaced with new hardware and over time the entire system can evolve and grow in small increments and without disruption.

The obvious way for businesses to benefit from the simplicity and efficiencies that these cloud giants have achieved is to subscribe to their services and move their applications onto one of these platforms.  Many organisations are already doing this but are finding that not all of their infrastructure can be migrated to public cloud.  In some cases this is for technical or compliance reasons and in others it is a commercial decision.  While great for applications that need to scale up or down rapidly, for more predictable workloads, the rental model of cloud will be more expensive in the long run.  In the same way that one would rent a car for a short visit to a foreign country, it would be better to buy a car if moving to that country for several years.  Thankfully there is now a solution for businesses aspiring to reach similar levels of simplicity and flexibility as the cloud providers within their own data centres.  Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) is that solution and it came about several years ago when software engineers from the likes of Google and Amazon realised the techniques they were using to build the infrastructure for their cloud platforms could be adapted to corporate data centres.  They developed a fully software-defined solution which runs on any commodity x86 hardware and supports any common hypervisor to create cloud-like infrastructure for use in on-premise data centres.  By starting out with as little as three server nodes, businesses can create a scale-out virtualisation platform which has no complex SAN to manage and includes automation and self-healing features that revolutionise how the data centre is architected.  Instead of having to predict their future infrastructure needs, organisations can start small and grow in small increments adding a little more compute, storage or both as needed.

While combining compute and storage like this using HCI forms the foundation for running a simple and highly scalable private cloud on-premise, the real benefits, both now and into the future, come from the fact that it is fully software defined.  New capabilities come from software updates and do not rely on specialised hardware.  At the same time, as hardware does evolve, new nodes will bring those innovations as they are added and older nodes can be decommissioned or re-purposed.  No more expensive fork-lift upgrades are required.

The next evolution of this technology is in moving beyond the convergence of compute and storage in the data centre to the convergence of on-premise private cloud with any number of public clouds to create a hybrid environment which is managed as a single entity; a true Enterprise Cloud.  As I mentioned previously, organisations need to be able to run their applications wherever makes the most sense at a particular time whether for technical, compliance or commercial reasons.  By just adopting public cloud while maintaining a legacy three-tier architecture on-premise, the overall complexity of IT is increasing.  Each public cloud provider also has its own strengths and one may be better suited to a use case than another.  Enterprise Cloud is an extension of the software-defined capabilities of HCI which will allow applications to migrate between private hyperconverged data centres and any public cloud as business requirements dictate.  Machine learning based predictive analytics services will monitor the overall hybrid ecosystem and based on commercial, governance or security rules will make sure that applications are running in the right place at the right time.

None of this would be possible of course if IT did not evolve away from its hardware centric approach of the past to a fully software-defined, hyperconverged, Enterprise Cloud.

Storage

Storage devices - NVMe on the rise

NVMe SSDs are going mainstream, superseding SATA and SAS SSDs. Server OEMs are finally delivering good server platforms for NVMe drives, which will help adoption of NVMe drives tremendously. Since the price of NVMe drives is just 5-10% higher compared to the price of datacenter grade SATA SSDs, we expect adoption to pick up tremendously during 2018. For small margin customers will get 2-3x the performance and half the latency.

Flash and DRAM shortage to alleviate

During 2017 the Flash and DRAM shortage was leading to increased costs for computer components which use Flash and DRAM, i.e. SSDs and DIMM modules. Delivery times were extended and varied significantly and between vendors - from couple of days to over a month, sometimes longer for larger quantities.

During 2018 new production capacities are coming into operation and we expect the shortage to be relieved. During Q2 and Q3 2018 we expect the price of NAND Flash to drop moderately. This will further lower the cost for SSDs and Flash-based storage systems and accelerate their adoption.

Hybrid storage systems will continue to decline

With the decreasing cost of Flash, SSD-HDD hybrids will make less and less sense. HDDs will be moved down to serve strictly capacity use-cases (where $/GB is more important than performance). Performance use-cases will be satisfied by Flash-based systems. Flash-based storage systems will also grow in size and scope, utilizing the newly-found efficiency of low cost NAND Flash.

High performance storage systems based on NVMe SSDs will start to gain wider adoption. With the right storage system partner it now becomes possible to have a shared storage system as fast as or faster than local SSDs.

The divergence of storage systems into two distinct categories will continue. The two categories are systems which focus only on performance (disregarding other aspects) and systems (like StorPool) which provide high performance, but also end-to-end data integrity and the full spectrum of data features (HA, scalability, snapshots, multi-site, etc).

SDS (Software-defined storage) and DS (Distributed Storage) - accelerated adoption

While in 2016 SDS was the second option in new projects (first were either traditional SAN or All-Flash Arrays), in 2017 SDS became the first option companies reviewed. We now see spill-over of SDS and DS in the datacenters and we expect it will be 30-50% of new deployments in 2018, with accelerating growth in 2019.

Also SDS is usually adopted in relatively larger projects (50 TB+), so we expect more than 50% of deployed capacity in 2018 to be SDS powered.

SDS is also the fundamental storage layer of HCI (Hyper-Converged Infrastructure) solutions, and there it replaces low- to mid-range SANs and all-flash arrays.

SDS consolidation

The concept of “unified storage” (block, file and object, in one product) is being demystified. As good as this concept sounds, it is an elusive promise. In practice, storage software needs very different architecture and implementation to be very good in each one of these use cases.   

In 2017 we saw initial segmentation, where many vendors started to be more precise in what they actually do and to focus on use cases they are strong at - be it block, file or object. Customers and solution providers seem to now understand that they are likely to end up with 2 or 3 best-of breed solutions for each storage layer, to get the job done well.

We expect this search for “best of breed” to continue in 2018. And as the technology mature, we will start to see some clear leaders on a per use case and per technology stack basis.

DR (Disaster Recovery) and workload mobility in growth mode

Integrated multi-site capabilities for DR, workload mobility and for backup to boom in 2018. This was somewhat a surprise, since most companies have backup figured out and one would imagine that DR was part of this plan. However increasing application complexity and business demands are driving a new wave of DR requirements, where storage systems can deliver nearly zero RTO and RPO.

IT infrastructure

Compute

Heterogeneous computing, the concept of using general purpose CPUs alongside compute resources better at the task at hand - GPUs, FPGAs, might start gaining wider adoption outside of the traditional applications it has been used for - video, image processing (and now increasingly bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining…). The main driver for this is machine learning and analytics over large pools of structured and unstructured enterprise data.

Machine learning, AI (Artificial Intelligence), IoT (Internet of Things) and the analytics applications they require will become a major driver for new IT infrastructure.

CPUs

Intel Xeon Scalable is being used in nearly all new IT infrastructure projects (public clouds, on-prem clouds and others). It brings approximately 50% higher compute density (cores per server, GB RAM per server) and considerable power efficiency gains over the previous generation. This in turn brings even better overall economics to virtualized infrastructure.

The AMD Zen microarchitecture (Epyc) are back in the game with the recently announced deployment in Microsoft Azure. We expect to see further adoption in 2018.

Some companies are experimenting with ARM and Power architecture servers. However we do not consider this mass market, yet. So this 2017 prediction of ours came short.

Our expectation is that the use of ARM and Power architecture CPUs will remain very limited to specific applications. ARM servers are better suited for batch processing (throughput-driven) applications than for interactive/online (latency-driven) applications.

Qualcomm has recently entered the server CPU market with their 48-core CPU.

Virtualization stacks

The virtualization stack is ripe for reinvention. On the one hand KVM is gaining market share on everyone else’s behalf. We expect that this trend will accelerate during 2018, with small and large vendors offering HCI and rack-level architecture cloud solutions based on KVM. On the other hand containers, especially managed by Kubernetes are spreading fast. We see potential for reinvention of the entire virtualization stack.

We project the decreasing market share of other hypervisors to accelerate in 2018.

Networks

25/50/100G Ethernet is continuing to gain adoption over 10G Ethernet. We predict that during 2018 more than 50% of new datacenter networks to use 25/50/100G instead of the older 10/40G standards.

Intel OmniPath has moved from seldom being used to a market leader in HPC interconnects. This is because the OmniPath adapter is now integrated into Intel's Xeon CPUs. During 2018, we expect that most new RDMA fabrics in HPC will be OmniPath. Some deployments outside of HPC might choose it due to better cost/performance vs Ethernet, but only for large scale multi-rack cases where the application demands extreme performance between compute nodes.

Infiniband is not going away. It is continuing to be used in new HPC deployments. Outside of HPC, we don't see a compelling case for Infiniband during 2018.

Data growth and applications

According to a Seagate commissioned study made by IDC by 2025 the global datasphere will grow to 163 zettabytes (that is a trillion gigabytes). That’s ten times the 16.1ZB of data generated in 2016. This growth comes mainly from unstructured data although structured data and core business application continue to add significantly.

As much of this data is created in specialized platforms (social media, specific hardware manufacturers, etc.) we expect the raise of a new crop of large private clouds, which will become good target market for IT infrastructure providers.  

Market developments

Consolidation & regulation

We expect new wave of consolidation in 2018 especially between server vendors and storage players.

Cloud is increasing its adoption, although still 25.09% of money are spent on building public clouds now, according to a study from IDC. There is an ongoing trend of cross-regional consolidation between 2-nd and 3-rd tier cloud providers, which we expect to continue.

On the other hand the General Data Protection Rule (GDPR) which will take effect on 25 May 2018 in the European Union will stir the public, private and hybrid-clouds market and will make local markets more segmented. We already see datacenter and cloud providers shifting workloads to newly opened local facilities in bigger markets, so they can save and serve data locally.

Asian vendors are picking up

We already see actions from leading Asian vendors like Alibaba, Huawei, AIC, NEC, etc. to compete head-to-head with their US counterparts. We expect this trend to deepen in 2018, fuelled by significant cash and human resources dedicated to it by Asian vendors and their increasingly global vision.

Summary

2018 promises to be an exciting year for storage and IT infrastructure. There are some master-trends happening in the industry (regulation with GDPR and the increasing strength of Asian vendors), which have the potential to swirl the markets and make 2018 an year, unlike any of the recent ones. So instead of incremental shifts, there may be some tectonic shifts. Let’s welcome 2018 and see what will happen.

Scott Jeschonek, Director of Cloud Solutions at Avere Systems thinks that while oil and water don’t mix, legacy and cloud do in comparison. In spite of the hype about moving applications to the cloud and about turning legacy applications in cloud-natives, he finds that legacy systems are alive and well, and he believes they aren’t going to go anywhere anytime soon:

“Though the cloud promises the cost savings and scalability that businesses are eager to adopt, many organisations are not yet ready to let go of existing applications that required massive investments and have become essential to their workflows.”

Complexity and challenges

He adds that re-writing mission-critical applications for the cloud is often inefficient: The process is lengthy and costly in financial terms. There can also be some unexpected issues that arise from moving applications to the cloud, but these will vary from one firm to the next. Top of the list is the challenge of latency. “Existing applications need fast data access, and with storage infrastructure growing in size and complexity, latency increases as the apps get farther away from the data. If there isn’t a total commitment to moving all data to the cloud, then latency is a guarantee”, he writes.

He mentions other challenges in his article for Data Center Dynamics: ‘Unlike oil and water, legacy and cloud can mix well, include mismatched protocols and the amount of time required to re-write software applications to conform with cloud standards. With regards to mismatched protocols he says legacy applications typically use standard protocols such as NFS and SMB for network-attached storage (NAS). They are “incompatible with object storage, the architecture most commonly used in the cloud.” Too many this makes migrating to the cloud a daunting prospect, but it needn’t be.

Benefits of familiarity

The ideal situation would be to keep the familiarity of legacy applications and their associated time-efficiencies. Not many professionals are so keen to embrace new technologies while sacrificing these benefits because they often have limited experience of them. So in many respects it makes sense to use the existing applications. If they aren’t broken, the why fix or replace them? Unless there is a dire need to replace existing infrastructure and applications, there is no reason to buy the latest and greatest new technology on the premise that it’s the newest must-have on the block.

“That said, nothing is stopping you from moving applications to the cloud as-is”, he says before adding: “While enterprises may still choose to develop a plan that includes modernisation, you can gradually and non-disruptively move key application stacks while preserving your existing workflow.”

To avoid the cost of time and money in re-writing application he recommends cloud-bursting. This can be achieved with hybrid cloud technologies. They permit legacy applications to run on servers “with their original protocols while communicating with the cloud”. Often an application programmable interface (API) will be used to connect the two for this purpose.

Cloud-bursting

Cloud-bursting solutions can let legacy applications “run in the datacentre of in a remote location while letting them use the public cloud compute resources as needed”, he says. The majority of the data can remain on-premise too. This reduces the risk and minimises the need to move large files to save time. This approach makes life easier for IT, and from an organisational perspective faster times to market can be achieved. As a utility model is used with the cloud, organisations only pay for what they use – and it allows organisations to focus on their core business while providing financial agility.

Cloud storage can also be used to back up data. Backing up is like an insurance policy. It might seem like an unnecessary expense, the cost of downtime as experienced recently by British Airways can be more prohibitive. The Telegraph reported on 29^th May 2017 that there is ‘Devotion to cost-cutting 'in the DNA' at British Airways’. The journalist behind the article, Bradley Gerrard, also wrote: “The financial cost of the power outage is set to cost the airline more than £100m, according to some estimates. Mr Wheeldon expected it to hit £120m, and he suggested there could also be a “reputational cost”. Some experts claimed that human error was behind the downtime.

Cloud back-ups

Anyway, cloud back-up is a must have in all necessity. “By using cloud snapshots or more comprehensive recovery from a mirrored copy stored in a remote cloud or private object location, the needed data is accessible and recoverable while using less expensive object storage options.”, claims Jeschonek. He therefore thinks that there are options to use a mixture of legacy systems and cloud solutions to save time and money. The cloud also offers additional back-up benefits too.

An article that appears on HP Enterprise’s website, ‘Cloud Control: 4 steps to find your company’s IT balance’, talks about the findings of a report by 451 Research: ‘Best Practices for Workload Placement in a Hybrid IT Environment’. It finds that companies must account for cost, business conditions, security, regulation and compliance. The report also notes that 61% of the respondents anticipated “spending less on hardware because they are shifting from traditional to on-premise clouds.” It adds that organisations are subsequently cutting their spending on servers, storage and networking.

Curt Hopkins, a staff writer for HPE magazine and the author of the article, agrees that huge costs can be incurred when moving non-cloud infrastructure to the cloud. “If you go with the public cloud, you will need to find a provider whose costs are affordable.” He adds that if you wish to “create your own private cloud, the cost of the servers on which to run it is not inconsequential.”

With old workloads you may have to plough through years and years of old documentation too. So before you move anything to the cloud, he advises you to undergo a complete total cost of ownership assessment. This will require you to factor in capital and operational costs, as well as training and personnel considerations.  

Finding balance

At the end of the day, he’s right to suggest that it’s all about finding the right IT balance. Hybrid IT, in the form of hybrid cloud, is the most appropriate way to achieve it. “Finding your IT balance is not a zero-sum game; you don’t have to choose legacy IT, public cloud or private cloud…you can mix those options based on your workloads”, he says. To find the right balance he stresses that there is a need to undertake a cost-benefit analysis, and he thinks balance can be found “in the interplay between your primary business considerations.” This therefore requires you to also evaluate your costs, security, agility and compliance as a whole to gain a complete picture of the costs and benefits.

A report by Deloitte, ‘Cloud and infrastructure – How much PaaS can you really use?’, argues that the past was about technology stacks. It says the present situation favours infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), but the future is about platform-as-a-service (PaaS). IT argues that PaaS is the future because many organisations are creating a new generation of custom applications. The key focus seems to therefore be on software developers, and the ability of organisations to manage risk in new development projects.

Significantly it says: “The widening gap between end user devices, data mobility, cloud services, and back office legacy systems can challenge the IT executive to manage and maintain technology is a complex array of delivery capabilities. From mobile apps to mainframe MIPs, and from in-house servers to sourced vendor services, managing this broad range requires a view on how much can change by when, an appropriate operating model, and a balanced perspective on what should be developed and controlled, and what needs to be monitored and governed.” Unfortunately, the report makes no mention of whether any cloud model is right or wrong for managing legacy applications.

A good mix

Cloud can nevertheless mix well with legacy applications, but there should also be some consideration of what your organisation can do with its existing infrastructure. Cloud back-up is advisable, and increasing your network bandwidth won’t necessarily mitigate the effects of latency. Nor for that matter will a rationalisation of your networking costs by reducing your network performance.

With machine learning, for example, it becomes possible to offer data acceleration with a product such as PORTrockIT. By using machine intelligence, you can mitigate the effects of data and network latency in a way that can’t be achieved with WAN optimisation. Cloud back-ups, as well as legacy and cloud applications that interconnect with each other can work more efficiently with reduced latency.

More to the point, while this is innovative technology, it enables you to maintain your existing infrastructure and so it can reduce your costs. With respect to disaster recovery, a data acceleration tool can improve your recovery time objectives to enable you to keep operating whenever disaster strikes. While traditionally data was placed close together to minimise the impact of latency, with a machine learning data acceleration solution your cloud-based disaster recovery sites can be placed far, far apart from each to ensure business and service continuity without falling to human error. So it’s worth investing in your legacy applications, hybrid cloud and in a data acceleration solution. Unlike oil and water, they all offer an optimising mix of solutions that will save you time and money. 

The adoption of Cloud computing, driven by a vast uptake of mobile applications, portable computing and remote working is pushing towards higher bandwidths and port densities. Increasing numbers of users, with diverse requirements, expect uninterrupted service as they access more and more data and applications. This, in turn, is changing the way in which data centres are designed and operated. Data centres need to offer higher bandwidth and more efficient network architectures to provide adequate cloud functionality and manage traffic spikes. Given the number of concurrent users, these can be vast,

To guarantee the high bandwidth, low latency and high uptime that cloud computing requires, networks are being organised in new and different ways. Traditionally, data centre traffic has mainly consisted of client-to-server interactions (north - south), but today network traffic in large data centres is primarily server-to-server (east - west) traffic for cloud computing applications. The 3-level tree network architecture commonly used in the past is built to accommodate client-to-server transmission but is not as effective for server-to-server applications, as it introduces latency and uses up bandwidth and. Data centres are re-evaluating their architectures, right down to the placement of switches. 

High density

The further users are from metropolitan areas, the more high-bandwidth applications may suffer. ‘Edge data centres’ move the ‘edge’ of the internet away from traditional internet hubs. Frequently-referenced applications and content are cached on servers closer to less densely networked or ‘tier-two’ markets. This improves the quality of high-bandwidth applications and improves the user experience for cloud services and mobile computing. However, building an edge network is different to building a ‘traditional’ network. Edge DCs are generally located in confined spaces and cabling from servers is often directly connected to a fibre platform in a central network cabinet. Fibres must accommodate cable twisting, moving, adding and changing and data has to pass through cables at sharp angles without quality loss.

High port density – in excess of 100 ports per rack unit - is essential to accommodating bandwidth-hungry high-density services. Fibres are brought directly from server ports to an Ultra High Density platform, which could accommodate up to 50% more fibre optic connections inside a traditional housing. Although cables need to have a significantly higher fibre count, handling should be no different to handling smaller cables, and termination should be as easy as possible. Poor cable management may result in signal interference and crosstalk, damage and failure. Adhering to good practices are vital to avoiding performance issues, data transmission errors and downtime. Edge data centres can be widely distributed, so automated asset management and tracking is a prerequisite. High Port density is also key to a successful rollout – traditional ‘72 ports per unit’ UHD solutions won’t suffice. ‘Edge’ or ‘access’ switches connect directly to end-user devices. If there’s ample port capacity, users can simply - and cost-effectively - re-patch devices themselves.

Reliable and robust

Today, the average edge data centre surface area is around 800 m2, with thousands of network ports. Still, many network managers carry out inventory and management of physical infrastructure with Excel sheets - or even paper, pencil and post-its. A well-specified DCIM system can help match IT and operational requirements and protocols to capacity planning and needs. Cloud is driving a huge demand for connectivity and availability, storage and server performance. As a result, numerous new systems being built, and existing systems are being retrofitted. That requires a great deal of care, as the foundation for today and tomorrow’s cloud services needs to be as reliable and robust as possible.

Benjamin Franklin once said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”. This statement will ring especially true for multinational businesses in the coming months as the GDPR comes into force across the European Union (EU).

By uniting 28 different EU member state laws under one data protection law, GDPR is set to harmonise data protection laws throughout the EU, giving greater rights to individuals.

Taking effect as of May 25, 2018, every business will need to alter their existing procedures to ensure the correct mechanisms to comply with GDPR are in place. Failure to comply with the regulation will result in costly penalties of four per cent of global annual turnover or €20 million, whichever value is greater.

Non-compliant businesses could also be faced with bans or suspensions on processing data, in addition to the risk of class actions and criminal sanctions.

GDPR and multinationals

To enforce the regulation, each country will have its own national data protection act (DPA) regulator that will oversee and manage any breaches. Businesses operating in multiple EU countries have frequently asked since the announcement of GDPR, how an authority will be chosen to enforce action if found non-compliant with the regulation, or if an authority from each EU affiliate would take action.

If a business has conducted non-compliant cross-border data processing activities, only one national DPA regulator must act on the complaint. For instances where a business’ data controller operates in multiple EU countries, the DPA regulator that will take action must be located in the same country as the organisation’s main establishment, or where it’s central administration takes place.

Non-EU affiliates of a multinational business will also be impacted by the GDPR, depending on whether the data is accessible from one central system to affiliates across the globe. Companies operating on this scale will need to have a clear understanding of how data flows in the company to ensure that cross-border data transfers are compliant.

This is just one example of how GDPR is introducing formal processes for issues not previously covered by the DPA. Another area that the ruling focusses on is when a data breach occurs.

In 2016, it was revealed that Yahoo had suffered a cyberattack that resulted in three billion users having their account details leaked. What was appalling to the public, however, was that the attack had taken place three years prior to the incident being reported.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. In 2017, Uber revealed that data of its users had been held to ransom by hackers in 2016, prompting similar backlash to the Yahoo breach.

Under GDPR, companies are required to report a breach within 72 hours of its discovery. This includes notifying the country’s DPA regulator, which in the UK is the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), and the people it impacts. Businesses should also consider taking additional steps to avoid the detrimental impact cyber breaches can have on its employees and customers.

Preparing to succeed

Identity management is just one example that allows companies to restrict access to certain resources within a system. Identity management can define what users can accomplish on the network depending on varying factors including the person’s location and device type.

With the rise in cloud computing among businesses, extra measures should also be taken to safeguard this data. A survey found that 41 per cent of businesses were using the public cloud for their work, with 38 per cent on a private cloud network. By implementing security measures like encryption software, businesses can prevent unauthorised access to digital information.

Taking these precautionary steps is necessary for businesses with more than 250 employees. This is because a business of this size, following the introduction of GDPR, must detail what information they are collecting and processing. This includes how long the information will be stored for and what technical security measures are in place to safeguard the information.

In addition to identity management and encryption software, businesses can also consider various other security tools for their systems, including anti-ransomware, exploit prevention and access management.

Another notable change for companies that have regular and systematic monitoring of individual data, or process a vast amount of sensitive personal data, is that they will now be required to employ a data protection officer (DPO). Sensitive data refers to genetic data and any personal information such as religious and political views.

GDPR will have a wide-ranging impact on multinational businesses. Although some may be more prepared than others, each business’ status in complying with GDPR is different, with no one solution suiting all. By investing in GDPR compliance specialists like eSpida, businesses can avoid costly fines because of discrepancies with the regulation.

It’s fair to say that the GDPR is the most meaningful change in data privacy law since it was first established over twenty years ago. Despite it currently only being enforced in the EU, many believe this will spark a revolution across the globe for the protection of data for individuals.

Businesses must prioritise updating their current systems to ensure their processing policies are compliant with the GDPR. Depending on the current position of a business, some may need more preparation than others. For example, not every business will be required to employ a DPO, but others may need to reorganise its HR team to help enforce GDPR compliance across a company.

With May just around the corner, businesses who have not already started preparing need to act now to avoid financial punishments and reputation repercussions.

However, this isn’t just about what consumers want. Beyond the headlines of connected devices - and customer behaviour analysis - IoT and Big Data are being used to solve increasingly complex business problems. All businesses, whether born digital or going digital, are turning to IoT technology to manage the connections, devices and applications that underpin their organisations. Automated workflows - which have long been a watchword of manufacturing business strategy - are being embraced by many disparate companies.

As we know, all things digital generate massive amounts of data, and IoT and big data are clearly intimately connected: the IoT industry generates ‘big data’ to take all of the information that it gathers and turn it into something useful, actionable - and sometimes - automated. As well as enabling us to do more things, quickly, IoT provides a wealth of data, which - with compute processing and intelligence - can generate invaluable insight for organisations to use to improve products, services, efficiencies and ultimately, revenues.

With Big Data, comes big requirements for processing power

Of course, everything has a knock-on effect. So, are existing business systems ready to cope with the intense pressure that IoT and big data bring?

Their impact is already being felt all along the technology supply chain and in response, CIOs have placed increasing pressure on IT infrastructure and service providers to help fulfil these mounting business requirements. IT departments need to deploy more forward-looking capacity management to be able to proactively meet the business priorities associated with IoT connections. And big data processing requires a vast amount of storage and computing resources.

As end-user demands increase, it has forced data centres to evolve and keep pace with the changing business requirements asked of them, placing them firmly at the heart of the business. Apart from being able to store IoT generated data, the ability to access and process it as meaningful actionable information - very quickly - is vitally important, and will give huge competitive advantage to those organisations that do it well.

Meeting the increasing requirements – High Density Computing

Historically, for a data centre to meet increasing requirements it would simply add floor space to accommodate more racks and servers. However, the growing needs for IT resources and productivity have come hand in hand with demand for greater efficiencies, better cost savings and lower environmental impact. Third party colocation data centres have increasingly been looked at as the way to support this growth and innovation, rather than CIOs expending capital to build and run their own on-premise capability.

High Performance Computing (HPC) aggregates computing power to deliver much higher performance to solve complex science, engineering and business problems. It was once seen as the reserve of the mega-corporation, but is now being looked at as a way to redress this IT budget/performance dichotomy. Itrequires data centres to adopt High Density and Ultra High Density innovation strategies in order to maximise productivity and efficiency, increase available power density and the ‘per foot’ computing power of the data centre.

Industry views around High Density vary widely. Data centres built as recently as a few years ago were designed to have a uniform energy distribution of around 2 to 4 kilowatts (kW) per IT rack. Some even added ‘high density zones’ capable of scaling up if required, but many of these required additional footprint to be provided around the higher power racks to balance cooling capability, or supplemental cooling equipment that raised the cost of supporting the kW density increase.

Gartner recently defined a high density capability as one where the energy needed is more than 15kW per rack for a given set of rows, but this is being revised upwards all the time with some High Performance Computing (HPC) platforms now requiring performance in the 30-40kW range - sometimes referred to as Ultra High Density.

Ultra High Density provides customers with a financial advantage, as the data centre is built to operate at a high density without any supplementary support technology, and therefore the costs per kW reduces with the increasing density within the rack. The denser the computing power can be stacked in a rack, the data centre space can be better optimised and offered to the customer, making a high density deployment significantly more cost effective. High and Ultra-high density is particularly attractive to some industry sector requirements: › Cloud service providers › Digital Media workload processing › Big data research › Core telecommunications network solutions.

Making HPC capabilities accessible to a wider group of organisations in sectors such as education, research, life sciences and government requires high density solutions that, through greater efficiency, lowers the total cost of the increased compute power. HPC is, therefore, a vital component in enabling organisations of varying sizes to affordably benefit from greater processing performance. Indeed, the denser the deployment, the more financially efficient the customer’s deployment becomes.

Choosing the right partner

Many data centres will claim to deliver high-density computing – and technically speaking, a lot of them will – but only data centres that have been built from the ground up with high density in mind will be able to do so cost-effectively.

With the Internet of Things and Big Data quickly becoming a reality, organisations across industries will need to ensure that their IT systems are ready and able to deal with the next generation of computing and performance needs to remain competitive and cost efficient. It’s more important than ever to conduct due diligence before signing up with data centre providers in order to avoid the risk of being tied into costly long-term contracts that neither meets current or future needs.

And, although the future seems expensive for these innovative technologies, for many, the possibilities are limited by issues of complexity and capacity. The benefit of IoT and big data will only come to fruition if businesses can run analytics that – with the growth of data – have become too complex and time critical for normal enterprise servers to handle efficiently.

At VIRTUS, we believe that getting the data centre strategy right means that a company has an intelligent and scalable asset that enables choice and growth. But - get it wrong and it becomes a fundamental constraint for innovation. So organisations must ensure their data centre strategy is ready and able to deal with the next generation of computing and performance needs - to remain not only competitive and cost efficient, but also ready for exponential growth.