Data centers are an integral part of the enterprise, designed to support business applications and provide services such as:
- Data storage, management, backup and recovery
- Productivity apps such as email
- Large e-commerce transactions
- Support for online gaming communities
- Big Data, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence
There are more than 7 million data centers in the world today. Virtually every business or government agency builds and maintains its own data center, or has access to someone else's, if not both. There are many options available today such as renting servers, server placement in the data center using public cloud services from providers such as Amazon, Microsoft, Sony and Google.
Data center architecture and requirements can vary significantly. For example, a datacenter built for a cloud service provider like Amazon meets facility, infrastructure, and security requirements that are vastly different from an all-private datacenter, like a center built for a government agency, designed to protect sensitive data.
Regardless of classification, efficient data center operation is achieved through a balanced investment in the facility and the equipment in which it is located. In addition, because data centers often store business-critical data and applications, it is important that both premises and equipment are protected from intruders and cyber attacks.
Data centers have evolved significantly in recent years. As enterprise IT continues to move to on-demand services, data center infrastructure has moved from on-premises servers to virtualized infrastructure that supports workloads across physical infrastructure pools and multi-cloud environments.
