"For over 40 years, data centres have pretty much been a staple of the IT ecosystem," said Rakesh Kumar, Managing Vice-President of Gartner. "Despite changes in technology for power and cooling, and changes in the design and build of these structures, their basic function and core requirements have, by and large, remained constant. These are centred on high levels of availability and redundancy, strong, well-documented processes to manage change, traditional vendor management and segmented organisational structures. This approach, however, is no longer appropriate for the digital world."
Gartner highlighted five reasons why organisations need to develop a more appropriate and modern data centre strategy:
As the core engine delivering IT services, the data centre will need to become far more agile and responsive than it has ever been and operate in a bimodal way. Without adapting the mentality and approach of data centres away from continuous stability to managed change and innovation, data centre managers will find it increasingly difficult to prove their value.
At the same time, there will be changes in the more traditional data centre hardware of servers, storage and network equipment, forcing data centre managers to rethink their procurement, management and support strategies. Yet another change will be in vendor relationships. The digital world is reshaping the vendor landscape and the technologies and vendors that have traditionally been instrumental in strong data centre services are going through changes, meaning I&O leaders will need to reshape their strategy for providing IT services.
Additional information is provided in the Gartner report Five Reasons Why You Need a Different Data Center Strategy for the Digital World. The report provides rankings and market share for the top 10 vendors.