IoT Will Transform The Data Center Industry

The Internet of Things (IoT) produces a tremendous amount of data and it’s starting to change the data center industry. This means many more people are looking to purchase data management packages for personal use.

Optimizing Data Centers for IoT Systems

Because of the increase in data usage and management needs, data centers will need to prepare for big changes. Security and privacy will certainly be a major demand—and a necessary one. The convergence of data usage and management needs will require an industry-wide transformation. Data centers need to upgrade their networks for the IoT revolution. Many data centers are only equipped to handle mid-level bandwidth needs. They will need to boost the number of connections and overall speed in order to keep up with IoT—especially 5G IoT.

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The increasing need for data storage could potentially require data centers to reconfigure their server farms to handle wider and more diverse data flows. At the same time, the data center industry may need to invent more robust load distribution strategies to deliver better data management for IoT.

IoT Could Transform the Data Center Industry

IoT can optimize strategic operations at data centers. Individual clients within large data centers will feel the impact of IoT solutions the most. IoT can help optimize client data flow, security, storage requirements, and access capabilities.

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Automated Data Center Management

IoT can provide data center automation. Routine data center tasks such as patching, monitoring, updating, scheduling, and configuration can all be managed remotely through algorithmically-managed IoT devices. This allows the data center to become more flexible.

Many data center customers like to take a hands-on approach when managing their servers. In the future, IoT could give the data center more flexibility to pass along to the client, even handing off server management to the customers themselves. Customers could potentially check on their servers, review maintenance predictions, and so forth, leveraging IoT-driven insights.

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Environmentally Sustainable Data Centers

IoT will allow data center operators to manage servers without using an excess amount of energy. These innovations are also helping data centers lessen their carbon footprint and become more environmentally friendly.

The data center industry is known to use a tremendous amount of energy and IoT could help it become more sustainable. Innovations such as AI-powered data centers, underwater data centers, and now IoT-managed data centers, demonstrate how IoT is bringing the data center industry into the future.

Edge Computing and IoT

Research Firm IDC reports that 45 percent of IoT-produced data will be stored, processed, and analyzed by edge computing. Dealing with data on the edge could also optimize data center workflows since there would be less data (and better data) flowing into the center.

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Conclusion

The ever-increasing influx of data from IoT devices will require data centers to add more security and robustness. Edge computing could mitigate some of the load problems, however, IoT will surely require the data center industry to reinvent itself.

The idea of an IoT-managed data center is promising for the industry. Having control of everyday tasks such as patching, monitoring, updating, and configuration will make data center operators jobs easier. IoT will also help data centers become more environmentally friendly. Because of all these benefits, IoT will undoubtedly shape the data center of the future.

Written by Michael Isberto, Blog Director and Content Writer at Colocation America.