Seemingly overnight, COVID-19 elevated data centers from resources to utilities. While global financial markets have been severely and negatively impacted by the pandemic, that shock would have cut much deeper were it not for workers’ and students’ abilities to carry on from home. There is widespread agreement that remote work will continue for a long time and, in many cases, is here to stay.
Data centers today serve a utilitarian role. Just as assuredly as we expect the lights to come on when we flick the switch, we expect to be able to connect to online content, classrooms, and corporate networks on demand and without fail. Yet, according to the Uptime Institute’s (UI) 2020 Global Data Center Survey, outages continue to occur with disturbing frequency, and the bigger outages are becoming more damaging and expensive.