If Darwin were writing about data centers, he’d say that the abodes of compute and storage are going through a phase of rapid evolution, and it’s this evolution that is driving the massive degree of projected growth in data centers over the coming years.

Although enterprise companies are continually advised to give up their data centers and go to the cloud, the data continues to indicate that some applications may be “cloud worthy,” but deemed too crucial to reside outside of in-house facilities. This degree of “server hugging” doesn’t make the enterprise facility the Neanderthal man of the data center family tree, but it does make them more resistant to change. However, a recent study by the IHS Markit research firm reported that a large number of companies intend to double the number of servers in their data centers in 2019, and we all know that they have to put those things somewhere.