Humankind has witnessed four major revolutions that would forever change the course of society. The first one occurred in 1780 with the introduction of mechanization; the second one in 1870 when electricity illuminated the world; the third one in 1969, with the use of computing; and the fourth is happening in this decade, through digital transformation.
The digital transformation taking place today includes all industries and economies, and addresses two essential needs: mass data and real-time availability.
In this new revolution, data centers play the leading role. According to Global Data, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, data centers have become the fifth essential critical service, after telecommunications, water, electricity and gas. The company estimates that global data center revenues by 2030 will reach US$948 billion, with a year-on-year growth rate of 6.7% in this decade.
The unprecedented reliance on IT systems driven by the social distancing required by the pandemic has left data center operators with a crucial need to enable 24/7/365 availability of critical infrastructure. Availability has become a business priority, but how to provide it?
Building and supporting a 24x7 data center infrastructure
Considering that data center services are essential in the post-pandemic world, and therefore must operate without interruption, you need robust and efficient infrastructure and services to support the compute:
- Adequate thermal management to maintain critical equipment at the correct operating temperatures.
- Optimized energy management, through high-efficiency uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems.
- Real-time monitoring of the infrastructure equipment and its performance 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
- Preventive maintenance routines for the data center infrastructure equipment, so the data center remains highly available.
Smart staffing to manage data center availability
While seeking to support the continuity of the data center, operators often encounter a lack of specialized expertise to support every stage of data center development and operation. Latin America will require 21,000 additional professionals to serve the data center industry, according to estimates from the Uptime Institute. Companies will also require equipment providers that have service availability 24/7, helping to address the gap in their own staffing.
Vertiv has defined a comprehensive lifecycle management approach to address these labor and service needs. This approach consists of optimizing the continuity of the infrastructure through three stages:
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Projects: Design, planning, engineering, integration, and management of new facilities.
- Maintenance: Preventive and corrective maintenance, monitoring services, reports, repairs and response capacity.
- Performance: Detailed assessments of critical infrastructure needs, provided by industry experts and backed by a broad product and services portfolio.
To support the availability of data centers, Vertiv has decentralized its onsite services. This means bringing resources closer to customers, with staff trained to meet every need, reducing reaction time to an incident, and meeting promised deadlines.
To learn more about how Vertiv's portfolio of services can support the digital transformation journey, visit https://www.vertiv.com/es-latam/productos/services-new/
