Data Center and Colocation Blog

Climate change is among the trends projected to impact the data center industry within the next 5 years, according to forecasts by researchers. And the growing acceptance of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices will continue to shape the future of data centers.

Research firm Gartner predicted that 90 percent of large data centers will respond to widespread environmental and socioeconomic trends by revising their strategies.

Based on research by Gartner and other industry experts, the following are changes that will force IT professionals to adapt through innovation:

Demand for increased security. While

As connectivity grows, so do threats to the IT infrastructures under your care—and, by extension, your organization’s ability to profit and serve its customers. Security strategies that worked fine in the not-so-distant past have grown woefully inadequate as the technology terrain shifts.

You’ve probably heard the acronym SIEM being thrown around a lot these days and for good reasons. As security experts, we know that perimeter defenses simply aren’t enough anymore, and we need a holistic view of our IT infrastructures.

SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) provides that insight, arming us

In my last post, we discussed the latest habit of non-IT departments in organizations large and small: hatching rogue IT operations on the cloud, taking your company’s data for a spin in the Wild, Wild Web — unpatched, unprotected, and nearly undetectable.

To recap, this trend involves departments buying IT services online through vendors like Amazon Web Services, Google Services, Microsoft Azure and others, setting up off-the-books IT operations outside of your organization’s boundaries.

These departments have come to rely on these services to conduct business. Shutting them off is not an

“The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, or FedRAMP, is a government-wide program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services.”—FedRamp website

That sounds positive, but getting approved for the FedRAMP certification is far tougher than most cloud providers anticipated. In fact, few organizations are truly capable of making it through the process. As shared by an article in GCN:

“Of more than 80 cloud providers who have applied to go through the FedRAMP certification, more than half are not yet ready to

As the internet of things (IoT) gains in popularity, so does edge computing — with futurists projecting that they will grow in tandem. An alternative to cloud computing, edge computing has been identified as a way to process and store data closer to end users.

But first, what is edge computing? With edge computing, IT professionals can provide data processing power at the edge of a network instead of maintaining it in a cloud or a central data warehouse. That’s why it has been considered a viable option for IoT applications,

Data center managers welcomed news that the ASHRAE, which sets requirements for energy-efficient building designs, has released updates to its data center efficiency standard, recognizing that they are different than other buildings.

Since 1975, the data center industry has been measured by the “Energy Standard for Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings” or ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1. The update, which is called the “Energy Standard for Data Centers” or Standard 90.4-2016, provides a performance-based solution. Rather than identify a prescriptive approach, the new standard provides the levels of performance the data centers need

Anyone in the data center industry understands the importance of uptime. Recent statistics show that it costs us, on average, $7,900 each minute that we experience a data center outage — an essential reason to minimize the incidents that cause downtime.

While there’s already pressure for IT professionals and data center managers to maintain a high rate of uptime, the demand will be even more intense in the 2020s. The expectation will be for 100 percent uptime, as internet connectivity — especially with the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT)

Lifeline is excited to share some great news from our partner, MidWest-IX:

MidWest-IX is excited to announce a Netflix OCA node is online with our Indianapolis peering fabric.  This will speed up access to Netflix content for any of our members.  Streaming content can account for up to 80% of a network’s traffic, and Netflix is a big part of that for many networks.  Network operators are always looking for the quickest ways to deliver content to their users and being a MidWest-IX customer is a great way to eliminate network bottlenecks.

We

With the incidences of cyber attacks escalating for business and institutions of all sizes, IT and security experts are busy enough setting up barriers against what have become garden variety-type cyber attacks — including denial-of-service attacks, malware and phishing.

But rare cyberattacks, which are currently under the radar for most companies, are worth analyzing because they could have much more devastating effects, according to a recent report.

Here’s why companies, banks, hospitals, and other institutions should be paying attention to these type of cyberattacks; they’re expected to start happening more often. In

With all the measures IT professionals and security experts are taking to fight cyber attacks, they are unprepared for the type that could lead to a widespread catastrophe, an international think tank said in a recent report.

Satellites are vulnerable to cyber attacks, said Chatham House, which could lead to extensive outages for the businesses, trade, and government and financial institutions that are dependent upon them to operate. And such an attack could make many of them vulnerable to widespread criminal acts.

It’s time for a radical view of cyber security, according