How Does the Cloud Impact Data Center Architectures?
It's undoubtedly one of the biggest technologies impacting data center architectures today. The cloud is undoubtedly one of the biggest inventions in technology in quite a long time, and not only is it changing the way we store information, but it's also changing many other aspects of technology as well. Clouds are becoming a commonplace thing that is changing the IT industry as we know it. Many in the IT industry predict multi-cloud platforms will be the next great breakthrough that takes the IT industry to yet another new level.
Many companies have come out with their version of the cloud. There is the Amazon Web Service (AWS), Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, to name a few. Having cloud technology at a new enterprise's fingertips allows them to have opportunities that they simply never had before such technology came into play.
The Impact of Cloud Technology on a Data Center's Architecture:
Data Center's used to have sprawling structures that spanned across many devices and sometimes had setups that were considered unique or even confusing to many people. Clouds have allowed data centers to become more compact storage centers that are much more organized and a lot easier to manage than the previous set-ups of data centers were.
Moreover, the impact of cloud technology has made it so that the data center still has a robust set of capabilities, but is set up in a much more simplistic way. These clouds allow the data center to essentially take on one of two forms as the cloud technology advances. One is that the data center can deploy devices that support as much as possible. Two would be to deploy snowflakes purpose-built for more narrow uses when the cloud technology fails.
Cloud Technology Provides Operations Led Data Centers:
The rise of the cloud technology is helping data centers move from device-led to operations-led management of the data centers that a company operates. The cloud and multi-cloud setups make the data center more about agility rather than capacity. In these cases, physical devices will take a back seat as operations will step to the forefront. Operations will be the starting point as businesses move to cloud-based movements rather than operations that counted on devices to come first, which was the case in the past.
Cloud is intended to eliminate the data center sprawl and help condense the operations into the cloud or multi-cloud technology, where operations take a front seat, and the devices themselves play a supporting role.
Enterprises that are becoming more efficient ultimately want to start with simplifying their previously complex infrastructures of devices. Reducing the complexity of their infrastructures means that businesses want to take advantage of every single possible opportunity to lessen their data center's infrastructure sprawl. These devices piled up over time and continued to make the client's data center and its structure more complex.
Cloud Technology Helps You Maintain Economic Leverage:
While some people will assume that the ultimate conclusion will be that a single supplier can now meet all of a business's data center infrastructure needs. However, there is not one specific ruler of the IT world, which means that in the end, it will likely wreak havoc on a company to have a single-vendor approach to building a data center.
Instead, many businesses will find themselves best served to build a data center that can work with at least two (or more) supplier solutions. Maintaining the ability to interchange across vendors will help the company have more options to choose from when it comes to their IT needs.
Cloud Technology Reminds Us That Process Dominates:
In the end, the ability to process information rapidly will ultimately be what drives the ever-evolving IT movement forward. Enterprises that want to change their system to clouds/multi-clouds will also need to change the processes underlying how they run their IT department long term if they wish to support such technology. However, this can be a big investment for many companies that would have to replace their devices and get new equipment to support cloud technology.
However, in the end, moving to the cloud and new equipment can save the company a ton of money in the future. It will help the company run more efficiently and help the company improve its revenue and bottom line. If a company can make the investment in the future of cloud and new technology, it will more than likely be worth the investment.
Conclusion:
Data centers are at the point where companies have to accept the concept that they need to evolve. The building blocks of clouds and other technology has changed to the point that the companies and infrastructure will have to change as well. Whether companies do it now and reap the benefits or wait is their decision, but the industry is changing, and companies must change with it to reap the maximum results.