The impact of lockdown and home working on the data centre industry

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This year has been an unpredictable and difficult year for many businesses and for economies across the globe, and vast amounts of employees are now adapting to remote working as the new way of life. In fact, many business owners are encouraging this new way of working that gives their employees more flexibility and a better work/life balance. There are certainly some positive outcomes from remote working such as reduced congestion on the roads, reduced pollution, and reports of increased employee productivity. It’s no doubt lockdown has facilitated a rise in remote working, and remote working appears to be here to stay, but what impact does this have on the data centre industry?

Remote working and the data centre industry

With a focus on remote working even down to digital conversations on platforms such as Zoom, Go Meeting, and Microsoft teams, companies are responsible for setting up remote access for employees and making sure all IT equipment works smoothly. Of course, the smoothness of remote working also relies on some elements that may be outside the control of the employer, such as connectivity infrastructure that must ensure the required bandwidth is available to employees and support growing demand on virtual communication platforms.

Data centres are the core of all these digital activities so there is increasing pressure for data centre operators to ensure maximum operational efficiency and uptime for servers to continue keeping customers happy. This has been especially difficult due to the COVID-19 pandemic being a situation beyond control and not anticipated. Data centre operators needed to act swiftly to the challenging situation so people could be enabled to connect digitally on a mass scale and continue business operation outside the traditional office.

How data centres are supporting remote working

There are numerous steps data centres are taking to cope with the increased demand. Data centre operators are used to growing pressure as digital growth was rapid from day to day anyway, even before COVID-19 began. Research from Technavio predicts that following lockdown and increases in remote working, the data centre sector will grow at a massive rate of over 17% per annum.

To cope with the pressures in remote working, there has been a lot of investment into IT infrastructure that includes cloud technology and back-up systems. It’s especially important to have appropriate back-up systems in place in case of any outages.

Hosted service providers are a key driver in the new normal ahead of remote working. In order for employees to hold effective virtual meetings, they will need to be provided with the best available platforms for digital conferencing.

Broad Group highlights statistics that show Microsoft reporting its Teams platform showed a 1000% increase in video meetings during just the month of March. Data centre operators continue to support cloud providers and telecoms firms that are experiencing such high levels of demand by ensuring greater capacity to host these services. As such, there are plans to build more data centres. 

Data centre security: an increasing concern

With an increase in data centres and capacity comes an increasing demand for the best data centre security. Security cages will be required not just for server security but also to successfully partition data centre space in such a way that allows multiple clients to use it. If you have a data centre project that requires high-level security caging, we can help. Check out our range of high-security and certified security cages here for more information:
https://cross-guard.com/secure-cages-enclosures/.

Data centre energy usage: an important consideration

Energy consumption in data centres is doubling every four years according to statistics, and this may only be set to increase with remote working. Therefore, it’s crucial to balance delivering high levels of service with optimal levels of energy efficiency. Hot aisle containment and cold aisle containment systems help you make best use of server cooling systems within your data to achieve energy and cost savings. Again, this is something Cross-Guard can help with. Check out our dedicated cold aisle containment and hot aisle containment pages for more information.

Need help with a data centre project? Get in touch

If you’d like help with security or aisle containment for a data centre project, please do get in touch. We understand the increasing demand means you may need quick turnaround for security caging and aisle containment systems and we’re here to help you work towards those tight deadlines. To speak to a member of our specialist team, give us a call on +44 (0)20 8108 9328 or email sales@cross-guard.com.

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