Issue link: http://cp.revolio.com/i/760098
HYPERCONVERGENCE THE EDGE DATA CENTER Author: Malgorzata Zabieglinska, ICT Product Manager Comarch www.ict.comarch.com services@comarch.com FROM AUTOMATION SYSTEM TO HYPERCONVERGENCE: THE TOP DATA CENTER TRENDS IN REVIEW The beginning of 2016 was a promising period for data centers, filled with new drivers such as the power of Big Data and new capabilities for analysis. What were the major trends in the data center industry during 2016? We try to identify and dive a bit deeper into top data center issues and the technologies that have had the most significant impact on the sector in 2016. From a niche market to one of the hottest trends in IT, hyperconverged infrastructure has been evolving quickly since 2011. According to Gartner, the market for hyperconverged integrated systems will grow by 79 percent in 2016 and will be worth $5 billion by 2019. 1 Virtualization is becoming a driving force for hyperconvergence development. In terms of eciency, data center providers have started to identify the value of merging IT system components into one box, or system, managed through a soware layer. Hyperconvergence allows the elimination of the divide between virtual and physical infrastructures with all barriers between servers, storage and networking resources. is elimination promises faster deployment, simplied operations and a scalable building-block approach that allows IT to expand by adding units and which also lowers the total cost of ownership. But, perhaps more importantly, hyperconvergence provides the exibility and agility within data centers that businesses require from IT. 2 It seems likely the next year will belong to hyperconverged trends. Nobody likes it when online movies are constantly buering and heavily pixelated. As we use data, we need to deal with increased trac and reduce latency. e Internet of ings (IoT) extension and the large expansion of data require faster processing and better security. is is the reason why edge networks or edge data centers have gained more and more attention in the last year. Edge data centers allow the Internet's "edge" to be moved closer to where the users are. e number of edge data centers built nearer to the consumers they serve is expanding. New data centers can be deployed as micro data centers and, if necessary, can be upgraded to full-blown facilities. Edge data center trends help your business not only to improve speed and performance, but also raise the quality of services. In a world where many data consumers complain about load times, providing better data center services is not just an option, but a duty. e requirement of keeping data as close to the end user as possible has become the most important factor in data center service planning. e amount of data stored in data centers is rapidly growing and managing the IT infrastructure —everything from powering, cooling, to security — is a big task. e data center industry is vastly dierent than it was just a few years ago. When automation entered the data center market, it was, at best, a curiosity. In 2016, DCIM and automation systems have become another trend of data center operations and will continue to slowly and steadily grow in the next years. A DCIM system gives you an in-depth view of what's happening in your environment and allows you to plan, manage and optimize the physical elements and processes that exist in a data center. erefore, improvement and automation of data center management will become the standard for reducing workloads, minimizing human error, achieving the highest levels of performance and increasing responsiveness to equipment failures. Data centers in the coming years will become increasingly automated and agile and this will signicantly increase interest in DCIM solution. e Internet of ings generates billions of data points that need to be stored, processed and analyzed in order tomake critical decisions or perform actions. e IoT revolution isn't just going to change our applications or endpoint devices. It is going to considerably change how data centers operate on a day-to-day basis. Gartner predicts that by 2020 there will be 26 billion IoT devices connected to the Internet, which has signicant implications on data center scale, communication and functionality, as well as storage capacity. 3 Changes in data ows and automated responses based on data analysis dramatically change the way next-generation data centers are designed, deployed, secured and managed at almost every level. Data center managers need to deploy more forward-looking capacity management to be able to proactively meet the business priorities associated with IoT. In addition, they need to learn how to manage multi-site data center infrastructure as a homogeneous IT environment, but still be able to monitor and control individual locations. Next year will still belong to IoT. ere are a number of rising trends – IoT, DCIM, hyperconvergence, edge data centers, to name a few – that will continue to have an impact on the IT environment together with the data center industry throughout 2017. It is highly probable that the trends of today will become the standards of tomorrow. So keep your eyes wide open, track market changes and analyze all trends carefully. en choose the right trends to implement successful organizational changes. DCIM AND AUTOMATION SYSTEMS ARE NO LONGER CURIOSITIES THE IMPACT OF IOT ON DATA CENTERS 1 Source: http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3308017 2 Source: http://www.networkcomputing.com/storage/10-hyperconvergence-trendsetters/1523423309 3 Source: http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2636073