Three characteristics of a post-pandemic data centre

The global pandemic has brought in some significant changes to the data centre industry. This is due to the increase in demand for data centre services as businesses began to work remotely. There was a greater emphasis on connectivity and uninterrupted access became more important, as people became reliant on the digital world for access to healthcare and other critical services.

But as we start to see signs of the pandemic subside, many businesses in the data centre industry might be wondering what changes will remain and what ones will go. Here are some characteristics that may affect data centres going forward. 

Robotics 

Robotics has gained a lot of interest in the data centre industry. Robots have been used to monitor interconnections, install and swap servers, and manage physical site security.

Using an on-site robot saves data centre companies both time and money and could be very useful in the post-pandemic era. 

Automation

lockdowns and social distancing requirements provoked an interest in automating tasks that would otherwise be done manually. This makes data centre operations less reliant on human intervention, providing an advantage during the pandemic.

There are areas of data centre operations where the use of automation is already in full swing. These include routine procedures like patching, updating and reporting, data centre scheduling and monitoring, standards and policy enforcement, and configuration management.

Transitioning to hyperscale 

Efficiency has meant a transition to hyperscale data centres and management. These facilities have the benefit of requiring less human intervention, reducing labour costs; maximising cooling efficiency, which supports environmental and cost-control objectives; and easier low-latency workload balancing. 

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft currently make up more than half of hyper-scale data centres, but with the pandemic seeming to ease, could see more companies involved in the hyperscale market?