2017 predictions
in particular our data centres. It’s no secret that
they are energy intensive; indeed they alone are
estimated to use approximately two per cent of
the electricity supply in the UK. As the demand for
data centre space continues to increase thanks to
massive rates of data growth, it is essential that
they become more resourceful to ensure energy
usage doesn’t rise too drastically, cost customers
more, increase the burden on the national grid,
and ultimately the planet. Historically the main
focus of making data centres more ‘green’ has
been around altering the cooling systems (air
conditioning) in legacy facilities as these have
represented 30-60 per cent of the non-IT (server
equipment) energy usage. Combined with this,
there are other smaller, more surprising technology
advancements such as ‘eco mode’ UPS systems
and energy efficient lighting that data centre
operators should take advantage of. As data
centres have such a long lifespan and their power
utilisation is so constant, small changes can have a
significant impact on their sustainability.
Jacco van Achterberg
EMEA sales director
Cloudian
Jon Lucas
Director
Hyve Managed Hosting
In the next year we are going to see a
rebalancing of spend from traditional security
solutions to data protection and recovery. Whilst
security spend protects the perimeter fence,
there are simply too many cases of breaches
getting past these defences to not have a plan
B in place. A hacker only needs to be right
once to gain access, whereas the company
has to be secure 100 per cent of the time.
CIOs and CEOs are starting to recognise that
millions of dollars in IT security investments,
while critically important, are just not enough
when a disaster such as a hack or ransomware
breaks through the perimeter or a natural
disaster like a hurricane floods their data centre.
In the wake of a disaster, companies quickly
come to the realisation that without the right
investments in a disaster recovery solution,
their businesses are exposed. To be proactive,
companies need a plan and tools in place to
recover from any disaster very quickly with as
little revenue and end user impact as possible.
Even if an organisation has implemented the
best preventative security technology, disasters
can and do still happen.’
2016’s major broadband, web hosting and data
centre outages have revealed how vulnerable
UK businesses are to service interruptions, and
how powerless they can be to recover quickly
when they do happen. Unfortunately, there is
little to suggest that 2017 will be a more reliable
year on the part of the leading service providers.
In the case of DDoS attacks, ISPs, hosts and
data centres (and their customers) will remain
vulnerable. A good outcome next year will be a
more robust, proactive effort on the part of these
‘front line’ organisations to mitigate the impact
of large scale attacks. Confidence needs to be
rebuilt and businesses need to see evidence
that more effective action is being taken. When
service outages occur in 2017, businesses
should think about how to ensure they overcome
a similar situation in the future. Protection against
this sort of service failure should figure more
actively in their technology strategy and they
should look at providers that can guarantee to
help them achieve that goal.
Last year we predicted that Amazon S3 would
become the de-facto standard for cloud storage.
The rise of S3 has helped drive the adoption
of cost effective object storage. Now, object
storage is not just a niche market; people are
using it in everyday life without realising, be it
through social media, Netflix and many other
outlets that rely on the service. S3 has turned
object storage into an industry movement.
Looking ahead into 2017, we are predicting a
bigger migration of data to cloud environments
with a focus on the deployment of hybrid public/
private cloud solutions. With more companies
looking to deploy a cloud storage solution, the
protection and control over sensitive data will be
a further driving force toward hybrid solutions.
Paul Zeiter
President
Zerto
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