How Will 2013 Look for Data Centers?

Gartner predicts that the year 2013 will see a $3.7 billion spend on global IT, a 4.2% growth over the previous year. As for data centers, a whopping £147 billion ($192 billion approximately) spend is expected, which is a 4.5% increase from 2012 figures. The increased spending marks double growth for the industry compared to 2012. Better yet, a 4.2% further growth is forecast for 2014!

According to Cisco, the prevailing traffic seen in data centers is in zettabyte range and by 2016 it is expected to quadruple to 6.6 zettabytes annually. It is estimated that the global data center IP traffic will swell from 2011 to 2016 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 31%.

Data centers are growing and changing faster than ever before. A big portion of this expansion will be from large corporations investing in their own data centers. The real growth is in small and medium businesses “renting” high-reliability data centers via retail and wholesale colocation facilities. More choices are expected with a heavy influx of new companies offering consolidation, virtualization, standardization, SAAS, and cloud computing. But with more choices come fresh challenges, which need to be tackled through proper business analysis, planning and data center implementation.

Now may be the time for IT professionals to use data centers to overcome the barriers of business growth and change via a well-thought data center strategy. How’s your strategy shaping up? Need help? Call the data center strategy experts.

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.