PodChats for FutureCIO: The digital transformation of the data centre

Mordor Intelligence forecasts data centre transformation to reach US$15.45 billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 12.88% during the forecast period of 2021-2026. Ciena claims that as much as 40% of the total operational costs for a data centre come from the energy needed to power and cool the massive amounts of equipment data centres house.No wonder, Mordor says data centre operators are being driven to modernise or transform data centres to increase overall efficiency while reducing operational costs. In this PodChats for FutureCIO, we are joined by Kei Furuta, President, Digital Edge, to talk about the challenges data centre operators must overcome as they move to transform the data centre.1.       What is different about the data centre of 2022 versus that of 2020?a.       How the digital transformation trend of the last 10 years changed the direction of the data centre?2.       Given that the focus of the CIO (and IT) will be “to place specific workloads and infrastructure to radically reduce that risk of exposure while improving that customer experience”, how do you see data centres evolving?3.       A 2020 IDC Datacenter Operational Survey noted that 72% of respondents indicated usage of colocation will increase over the next 12 months. The same survey found 79% planning to deploy more IT services at edge locations. It is now two years since that survey. Do you see the trend to collocate still occurring in 2023?4.       Gartner says with more organisations moving workloads to the cloud, the future of the data centre will be relegated to workloads that cannot move to the cloud (for now) or supporting those systems that are most economically efficient on-premises. Your thoughts on this?5.       IDC says business success will be supported by digital infrastructure architectures and management strategies optimized for a new generation of highly distributed workers and data-intensive applications and services. In the future, what does the data centre look like?