Although COVID-19 did reduce global IT spending last year, many companies were still forced to increase their IT budgets to adapt to new operational requirements and set up their employees to work from home.

In the face of grave danger, be that when a wildfire breaks out, a hurricane hits, or severe flooding overwhelms an area, avoiding any loss of network connectivity is crucial.

The demand for data took center stage during the pandemic and underscored the critical importance of the data center.

At one point, the concept of 99.999% uptime was seen as the “Holy Grail,” a virtually unachievable goal. Today, the “five nines” are seen as table stakes; companies that cannot provide that level of uptime are at a competitive disadvantage.

Examples of cloud computing use can be found practically everywhere, from messaging apps, social networking, and streaming services to business processes, office tools, lending platforms, or chatbots.

With the past year defined by remote workforces, virtual collaboration, and unprecedented change, it’s not surprising that more companies are finally making the move to public clouds to improve efficiencies and accelerate digital transformation.

Despite dozens of very high-profile outbreaks, organizations across the globe have continued to fall victim to ransomware.

Data center vendor competition is heating up, creating an unprecedented level of choice for colocation buyers.

When asked about their most recent significant outage, over half of the respondents to Uptime Institute’s 2020 Global Survey of Data Center and IT Managers who reported an outage in the past three years estimated its cost at more than $100,000 (of which almost a third reported costs of $1 million or above).

McMaster approved the use of $6 million out of the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) fund — part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act of 2020 — to provide underserved communities with additional resources, including technology and educational programing, to help those whose education or economic situation has been disrupted by COVID-19.