April 3, 2017 – Disruptive businesses in just about every industry have contracted a hyperscale data center to make their dreams of digital transformation a reality, enabling new strategic opportunities. Enterprises that want to avoid being left behind by competitors or nimble startups are curious as to how they can also benefit from adopting hyperscale technology services. This is why we at Maintech have gathered some predictions from industry thought leaders, analysts, and technology experts who have been witnesses to the data center evolution over the past few decades.
The workload demands of rapidly increasing amounts of data, content, and traffic have scaled beyond the ability of many internal IT departments to manage alone. Competing mandates for end user support, maintaining applications and infrastructure, and planning strategic initiatives like cloud migration demand long-term solutions, not temporary fixes. For many enterprises in industries like healthcare, banking, utilities, IT and telecommunications, hyperscale data centers are the ideal way to ensure sufficient scalability and reliability to keep pace with their growth.
Jason Waxman, Corporate Vice President and General Manager of Intel’s Datacenter Solutions Group, predicts that by 2025, 70-80% of the world’s systems consumed in the data centers will be hyperscale technology1 in large data centers. This evolution won’t be just for computing giants like IBM, Apple, HPE, and Microsoft. Hyperscale data2 centers will serve the content and data delivery needs for commercial, government and nonprofit entities. The rapidly scaling demands of connected users and the Internet of Things (IoT) means even though technology is more efficient, operational complexities and utility demands exceed the capacity of traditional data centers.
Here are three types of hyperscale service offerings, and predictions on how each will evolve over the next decade or so:
Cloud Providers
Serving web applications, data and content to address the needs of the global economy, the growth of cloud computing is accelerated by consumers and IoT connected devices. Traditional servers are increasingly being replaced by multi-function nodes to manage computing, networking and storage services. Hyperscale cloud data centers are equipped with:
- High-efficiency cooling and climate control
- Redundant power and telecommunications services
- Comprehensive physical and digital security
Industry experts like Waxman say that cloud services and hyperscale technology will continue to democratize access to computing resources, application integration, and technology expertise. Currently, about two-thirds of cloud computing resources are dedicated to serving consumer-based applications. Over the next decade, Waxman says this will change3, as the cloud will serve emerging and growing computing needs including:
- Industrial devices connected to the IoT
- Autonomous driving governance
- Analytics and data visualization
- Tracking products and vehicles through RFID and telematics
- Cognitive computing/machine learning with natural language processing
Cloud service providers are using software-defined networking, hardware orchestration and agile computing methodology/strategies to ensure services are available in minutes or hours, not days or weeks.
OEM/ODM Service Frameworks
Hyperscale data centers enable businesses to choose the service elements they require to establish a predictable baseline or full lifecycle support across both ODM & OEM computing platforms4. This framework provides predictable service levels, defined cost, and transparent growth forecasting.
Over the next several years, technology service providers will continue to grow their relationships with hardware and software manufacturers/developers, as OEMs and ODMs want to continue to own their contractual and sales relationships with clients, and shift the professional and managed services responsibility to a company with proven depth and breadth of capabilities and expertise. An article from analyst firm McKinsey predicts5 that as web transactions, digital messaging, machine to machine and internet search volumes grow, businesses with hyperscale technology capacity will leverage it as a competitive advantage, and disrupt their industry segment.
On-Premises or Colocation and Hyperscale
Businesses that own their own data centers, or choose to manage some or all of their technology in a colocation facility, can and will continue to benefit from hyperscale technology. They can outsource service elements such as installation, ongoing maintenance, and repair support of their on-site network, freeing up their IT team to focus on strategic initiatives related to applications, data and meeting regulatory compliance and business growth objectives.
451 Research6 says the biggest Internet giants – Apple, Google, and Microsoft – are increasingly relying on white-box ODMs for their basic datacenter compute modules and connecting them to their own distributed software layers. Other large enterprises are adopting similar infrastructure operating models, with hyperscale clusters based on the same sort of nodes and virtual machines in place of the monolithic mainframe supercomputers of the past. Businesses looking to ensure that these clusters are installed, deployed and secured properly should contract the services of a professional and managed data center services provider that has the experience, partnerships, and expertise required to keeps these systems running, regardless of the data center location.
Hyperscale data centers of the future, whether they are run by data center outsourcing providers or enterprise owned, will continue to require a highly specialized set of expertise, and an “open minded” attitude toward open source software and hardware. By open source hardware, we refer to the “white box” infrastructure nodes which are evolving out of the Open Compute Project.7 Service providers will continue to leverage their expertise to optimize the utilization of storage, memory and the necessary node/server parts to ensure that the server racks are capable of serving the applications, data and content to employees, customers, prospects and other audience segments.
To learn more about how Maintech’s Hyperscale Support Framework can reduce your service cost and improve your operational effectiveness, please contact your Maintech Team.
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