With smart phones, electronic personal assistants, and millions of apps at our fingertips, technology is not only becoming more pervasive in our everyday lives, the Internet of Things (IoT) is driving demand for increased data center storage. In fact, according to “The Future of the Data Center: Reinventing the Network,” the internet has grown by a factor of 100 over the past 10 years, driving an increase in data center computing by a factor 1,000.
An interesting forecast by International Data Corporation that was featured in DatacenterDynamics predicted that the total number of data centers will cap in 2017. That sounds hard to believe, but enterprise, financial, health care, and government sectors are no longer building and managing their own data centers. Instead, they are moving their data to facilities designed, built, and operated by experienced providers. As a result, data center storage facilities are facing a unique challenge. Do they develop new facilities or expand current ones?