This past December, Google Inc. opened two new data centers in Singapore and Taiwan to compensate for the rapidly increasing data consumption in Asia.
Joe Kava, Google’s Vice President of Data Centers wrote in a blog post that “between July and September of this year alone, more than 60 million people in Asia landed on the mobile Internet for the first time. That’s almost two Canadas, or three Australias. And this growth probably won’t slow for some time, since the majority of people that have yet to come online also happen to live in Asia”.
Kava goes on to add, “While we’ve been busy building, the growth in Asia’s Internet has been amazing. The number of Internet users in India doubled, from 100 million to 200 million. It took six years to achieve that milestone in the U.S.”
In addition to the everyday internet user, enterprises have also heavily increased the amount of data they use for everyday operations. So much so that the Global Big Data Market is expected to post a CAGR of 34.17 percent for the 2014-2018 forecast period. This in turn is driving the need for data centers worldwide.
Data centers are a vital tool that help companies lacking the IT infrastructure to store their big data. The Global Data Center Market has exploded in the past five years and isn’t expected to slow anytime soon, growing at an anticipated CAGR of 10.71 percent during the period 2012-2016.
Data center market consists of component markets such as storage, networking, servers, and powering and cooling solutions. TechNavio has analysed trends from each of these components and report the top 14 trends expected to have an enormous impact on the data center industry in the coming years:
- Modularization of Data Centers
Enterprises are under tremendous pressure to keep up with the constant increase in data, leading companies to scale up their data center capacity. This is leading to a rapid adoption of containerized data center facilities. These containerized data center facilities are self-sufficient and have all the required supporting services incorporated into the container and can be easily transported from one location to another.
- Vendors Providing Platform Independent Services
Enterprises across the globe are procuring platform-independent services from data center service providers to address the increasing complexity in the infrastructure due to multi-vendor solution integration.
- Remote Management of IT Services
With the adoption of solutions providing remote monitoring and management of the IT infrastructure, network administrators are better able to address problems at a faster pace. The allocation of computing resources and managing the level of supporting facilities such as powering and cooling are the major advantages associated with RMITS.
- Adoption of Green Computing Solutions
Green computing and power saving solutions are in great demand among enterprises and data center service providers. Data center service providers are procuring the power from renewable sources which is reducing the carbon footprint of the data center facility.
- Economizers and Liquid-Based Cooling
The new data center facilities are being established in regions where the average temperatures are lower than data center temperature, making it easy to adopt natural solutions to cool data centers. Further, many data centers are also being equipped with liquid-based cooling solutions which are faster and efficient compared to the traditional air-based cooling.
- BYOD Acceptance Among Enterprises
BYOD enables end-users to access enterprise applications and data from any remote location, independent of underlying hardware configuration over cloud infrastructure. End-users are accessing these applications using smartphones, tablets, and other handheld devices which reduce the operational costs associated with provisioning computing systems to the employees.
- Emerging Hubs for Data Center Establishment
BRIC countries and GCC countries are emerging as the hubs for the establishment of new data center facilities across the globe. With the availability of cheaper labor and data center supporting facilities at lower prices, there is an increasing number of data center facilities being established in these countries.
- Data Center Consolidation Increasing Productivity
A combination of the increasing complexity of network infrastructure and data center facilities being hosted in multiple locations creates a burden for managing the infrastructure. To tackle this problem, enterprises are opting for consolidation of data centers into a single centralized location. By consolidation, enterprises are able to better allocate computing resources and equipment performance management.
- Data Center Space Optimization by Using Taller Racks and High Server Density
The data center rack market revenue crossed the billion dollar mark in 2013 and is showing an incremental growth rate year on year. Data center racks and enclosures are no longer commodity products which were simply used to stack IT equipment and other inventory. 42U has been the rack standard for past few years but demand of even higher rack units is growing rapidly. By 2016, 48U or higher racks are expected to capture one-third of the market.
- Micro servers – Small Yet Powerful
In recent years, micro servers have emerged as a smart alternative to traditional servers in data centers. They provide the same level of high functionality but with the added benefit of space efficiency. The unit shipment of micro servers tripled in 2012 and doubled in 2013. Additionally, market revenue is expected to grow more than 50 percent yearly until 2018. Moreover, they are expected to gain more traction in the market as the demand for server efficiency and low-power architecture increases along with growth of Web 2.0 companies.
- Big Data: Growing Structured and Unstructured Data
The unprecedented growth in data has forced enterprises to focus on using less expensive, active, concerted, and adaptive methods to analyze and share data.
- Cost benefits through VDI Implementation
VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) technology came into limelight only a few years ago. Since 2011, the market has witnessed growth of over 70 percent in VDI installations. Though a bit costly to deploy, there are huge long-term cost benefits associated with this technology for enterprises. VMware and Citrix are the leading vendors and capture close to 90 percent of the market.
- Increased Buzz Around Exponentially Growing Software Defined Solutions
Software defined solutions are creating high traction among stake holders in the networking value chain. This technology is considered as a threat to existing networking architectures and can be potentially harmful for network fabric vendors.
- Ethernet industry transitioning towards 40G/100G and Beyond
High speed data handling and transmission equipment are hot commodities in the networking industry. Leading networking equipment vendors agree that the market has transitioned from 1G Ethernet to 10G Ethernet. However, they also admit that the next transition towards 40G/100G is round the corner and the networking standards would shift much faster this time.
For more information on the Data Center Industry, view our reports on:
Data Center Construction Market in US 2012-2016
Global Data Center Rack Market 2012-2016
Global Data Center Construction Market 2012-2016
Global Data Center Cooling Solutions Market 2011-2015
Global Data Center Colocation and Managed Hosting Services Market 2012-2016
View our array of other Data Center Market reports.
