The past two years have seen huge disruption impacting businesses, with many being forced to speed up digital transformation plans in order to cope with a complete change to the way we work. Although there's much talk currently about the pandemic having reached its endgame, there's no denying the impact it's had, and alongside changing consumer demands and priorities, many businesses are in a very different place to the one they were in pre-pandemic.
Employment rates are now higher than pre-coronavirus levels and it seems as though society has levelled out. As such, many businesses will now be reassessing their long-term infrastructure plans and planning much more proactively, instead of the reactive approach many were forced into.
With this in mind, here are the key trends we expect to influence the data centre industry in 2022:
1. Increased requirement for cybersecurity
The continued frequency of cybersecurity incidents into 2022 is only going to serve to accelerate this trend. Cybersecurity measures are going to be taken as seriously as it deserves to be in the new year, rather than being treated as a monotonous annual training exercise. Alongside this greater awareness, businesses will be looking to boost their infrastructure's resilience to these bad actors, primarily through storing their mission critical applications in more IT environments onsite or at specialist datacentres.
2. Decreasing public cloud user figures
2022 is going to see a growth in alternative data hosting methods and a subsequent shrinking of public clouds user figures. Enterprises have now had a long enough timeframe to assess if public cloud is applicable to their business. The benefits of better security and data sovereignty afforded by services such as colocation will outweigh the benefits of public cloud to many.
3. Increased focus on sustainability
The climate crisis is becoming a more pressing issue each day, with consumer demand for action and sustainability measures growing at the same speed. As heavy energy consumers, data centres are going to face more scrutiny than most in this regard.
As customers reorganise their demands and prioritise sustainability, data centres will have to take action in order to remain competitive, promoting innovations in areas such as generators being powered by Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO), a cleaner alternative to diesel which is traditionally used to fuel generators and data hall design layouts. Learn more about the sustainability measures we've implemented here.
4. Continued supply chain disruption
Data centres are constantly relying on continuous supply lines to ensure their mission of maintaining uptime, making data centre providers acutely aware of the supply issue facing the nation. Although cars are no longer queuing on forecourts for fuel, the uncertainty over trade agreements is likely to continue the supply chain disruption in the long term. Responsible data centres that have long standing contracts in place should be able to avoid the issues but those that haven't will be leaving themselves exposed.
Looking ahead
While no one can look into the future, 2022 is set to be an interesting year for data centre providers. If you're looking for a provider that can maintain supply chain continuity, while meeting the new demands for sustainability, sovereignty, and security, get in touch with us today to learn more: https://www.serverchoice.com/contact
