Issue link: http://cp.revolio.com/i/207723
S ummer has ended, and 2013 is almost over. This is a great time to look ahead to the coming year, especially in the data center where predicting future requirements can sometimes seem more like an art than a science. Fortunately, industry trend data can help answer some important questions. What insights can we extract from the numbers? What data center trends loom large? And what will be the biggest IT disruptors? Combined with what we've heard directly from data center managers, the industry trend data is pointing to at least four major trends that will impact data centers in 2014. To bring these trends into focus, first consider what we learned about server deployments from 2013 industry data. The enterprise platform team at International Data Corporation (IDC) reported that yearover-year server unit shipments decreased in the second quarter of 2013. This was, in fact, the third consecutive quarter with declining server shipments. The decline can be attributed to the successful focus on consolidation, virtualization, and other cost-cutting initiatives adopted by enterprises around the world. Data center efficiency has gone up; infrastructure costs have come down. These 2013 successes are definitely driving some of the 2014 data center trends, which include: Interactivity While server shipments were down slightly in 2013, server workloads will continue to explode in 2014, especially in the area of smart phones and other devices that require highly interactive functionality to meet user service-level expectations. The cloud More services and infrastructure are migrating to private and public clouds as the comfort level rises for this form of data center resource augmentation. High-performance computing (HPC) The compute resources that remain in the data center are evolving to address more customized workloads and to boost service levels and processing throughput. Security All of the above trends as well as the increasing incidence and severity of cyber-attacks are straining traditional data center defenses. www.datacenterjournal.com Let's look at each trend in more detail, and then review best practices and solutions that can minimize the potential negative impacts. Trend #1: Interactivity – Getting Ready for More of a Good Thing IT has consolidated and virtualized compute resources, and servers are more intelligently pooled and shared within the data center today. However, smart devices continue to put more pressure on the streamlined data center. We estimate that for every 600 mobile phones, for example, IT must add another server to the data center. And this is just for phones. In 2014, the numbers and types of smart devices – phones, notebooks, tablets, and surveillance cameras – will continue to increase. The popularity of these devices is highly contagious; the more the devices proliferate, the more they attract new users. Besides the growing numbers and types of devices, this interactivity trend is driving "big data" traffic. Processing requests from interactive devices, managing the associated data storage, and delivering usable data will continue to boost demands on servers in 2014. Because the vast majority of the data associated with interactive mobile devices is at the network edge, the data center servers allocated to edge applications and tasks will be the most impacted as they expand to meet this need. This will require an increasing portion of the data center power and cooling budget. Monitoring, managing, and securing the data center resources associated with literally billions of smart devices will be an increasing burden on IT next year. ing their own clouds. Additionally, IT has more choices as service providers expand portfolios of cloud services and infrastructure outsourcing options. Indirectly, IT will also benefit as server platform vendors implement cloud-targeted features and include cloud-targeted products in their roadmaps. Large public cloud providers and data center operators will be able to take advantage of custom processor solutions and IP functionality related to system-on-chip (SoC) approaches and other alternatives to monolithic development that will reduce design cycles. Trend #3: HPC – Thinking "Out of the Box" Just as processors and servers are evolving for the cloud, custom compute platforms are a trend within the overall HPC market as well. In 2014, servers will be more narrowly targeted to address increased growth and maturity of specific workload types. Big data is a driver of this reshaping of general-purpose computing, and the advancements related to this trend will impact silicon for servers, networks, and storage platforms as well as edge devices and end-to-end analytics for tasks such as cache acceleration. The HPC trend will also be characterized by integration. For example, you can expect to see integrated fabric controllers on processors designed for 100GB/second line rates. The goals in this area are straightforward: continue to drive up performance and drive down costs. Additionally, the emergence of platforms customized for various workloads will drive a similar migration from basic compilers and libraries to more flexible tool sets and system software. Trend #2: The Cloud – Adjusting to High Altitudes Trend #4: Security – Knowing the Enemy While smart devices are driving up demand for data center server processing power, advancements in cloud technology and services will offer more viable alternatives in 2014. IDC predicts that 31% of companies will source greater than half of their IT spend from the public cloud by 2016, and that a majority (80%) of Global 2000 businesses will have 30% of their IT capability residing offsite by that same year. This growing acceptance of the public cloud is impacting the data center directly, with more organizations deploy- The last trend is really more of a response to the first three trends just described. More devices and more data associated with those devices, more data and services moving into the cloud, and major changes in HPC platforms – all of these changes should be viewed as business vulnerabilities. To minimize the risks associated with these areas of rapid change, security has to be approached in new ways. In 2014, security will continue to be a major trend as data centers try to keep ahead of cyber attacks and protect their THE DATA CENTER JOURNAL | 15