Manage Different Types of Risk
Digital business will not only see a huge number of devices connected, but will also see datacentres as the focal point of these connections.
Traditionally, datacentres have focused on risk management, which is normally associated with downtime, system availability and application-centric breaches.
Datacentre strategies fit for the digital world must have a key focus on a broad approach to risk management.
Another important risk for many digital business transactions is that no single entity will own availability and performance service levels for the complete end-to-end transaction. This will create a whole new set of service assurance challenges.
Make the Datacentre Part of a Broader Hybrid Topology
Traditionally, IT spending has been through IT departments with data centres delivering IT services. This is rapidly changing.
Currently, 38 per cent of total IT spend is outside of IT, with a disproportionate amount in digital projects; by 2017, it will be more than 50 percent.
Lines of businesses will spend with Cloud and third-party service providers if they feel their datacentre is either too slow to respond or too closed to new technologies.
As a result, infrastructure and operations leaders must ensure that their internal datacentres are able to connect into a broader hybrid topology.
Embrace New Technologies in a Different Way
The digital world is bringing a host of new technologies that will need to be managed differently in datacentres.
At the edge, there will be mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, which will need the operational control of datacentres, such as software configurations, standardised operating environments and security patching.
At the same time, there will be changes in the more traditional datacentre hardware of servers, storage and network equipment, forcing datacentre managers to rethink their procurement, management and support strategies. Yet another change will be in vendor relationships.
The digital world is reshaping the vendor landscape and the technologies and vendors that have traditionally been instrumental in strong datacentre services are going through changes, meaning I&O leaders will need to reshape their strategy for providing IT services.