How Data Centres Are Powering Your Holiday Shopping: Meeting Christmas Demand

With most brick-and-mortar shops closed during the Christmas season, internet sales as a proportion of retail sales skyrocketed to 30.2% in 2023. This dramatic escalation, fuelled by a marked shift towards online shopping and the temporary shuttering of many retail stores as Christmas approaches, has placed unprecedented demands on data centres. In essence, these facilities are the backbone of e-commerce, required to maintain seamless operations to support millions of online transactions. They play a crucial role in ensuring that essential website systems—such as payment platforms and inventory databases—run smoothly and continuously.
Though it boasts a relatively short history of just ten years, Black Friday has rapidly ascended to become one of the foremost days for online shopping, trailing only behind the monumental Cyber Monday. In previous years, the festive shopping frenzy was often concentrated over weekends when high street stores were bustling with activity. However, with a significant portion of the population working from home and engaging in Christmas shopping from their living rooms, data centres now face the pressing risk of increased data latency.
Data latency, characterised by the delay in incoming data, poses a challenge for online shoppers as it can cause frustrating slowdowns in transaction processing. Nonetheless, every challenge invites a solution. More organisations are embracing edge computing, an innovative approach that shifts critical processing tasks away from central IT hotspots and positions them closer to the end-users. While edge computing presents its own set of management challenges due to reduced oversight for data centre managers, it emerges as a promising strategy to enhance the speed and efficiency of data transfers.
The data centre market is undergoing rapid expansion, with new facilities arising in locations previously deemed unconventional including the burgeoning trend of undersea data centres powered by offshore wind turbines. To achieve maximum operational efficiency, facility and IT managers must explore and test cutting-edge methodologies. One of the most notable advancements within the IT landscape is the rise of cloud technology, with recent analyses revealing that cloud adoption has soared to 81%. The cloud is poised to be instrumental in managing the influx of online shoppers, ensuring that speed, reliability, and, crucially, security is not compromised.
Moreover, the realm of cybersecurity is experiencing a meteoric rise, triggered by an escalating demand for skilled information security consultants and engineers. As millions of bytes of customer data flood into these centres, the security of this sensitive information is brought to the forefront. Data centre managers are now leveraging WAN data acceleration solutions, crucial for efficiently and securely handling encrypted data transfers, thereby safeguarding customer information against potential threats.
Undoubtedly, data centres stand as the bedrock of our increasingly digital world. This pivotal role brings with it an escalating demand for adept IT professionals equipped with the necessary skills to design, build, and operate these essential infrastructures.
Please note our office’s last day for the Christmas holidays is the 20th of December, returning to work on the 2nd of January 2025.
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