Are Data Centers a ‘Utility’?
I ran across this recent InfoWorld article that discusses how IT jobs — especially those of data center managers — might permanently change because of today’s tight budgets. “There’s an incredible focus this year on driving efficiency,” says Rick Villars, vice president of storage systems at IDC. “What this means is reducing capital expenditures and trying to cut operational expenses wherever possible.”
The article points out that many small and midsize companies are beginning to think of the data center as a utility. “Such thinking would ultimately lead upper management to realize that hosted data centers could serve customers tremendous scale with such little effort and cost that CIOs simply have to start buying professionally managed services rather than spending resources to do it themselves. The writing is on the wall. Small and midsize data centers won’t exist very long as companies take a look at why they’re managing data centers themselves.”
We’re seeing this trend from the other side, which is why EasyStreet continues to focus on providing reliable data center and managed services for the increasing number of northwest companies that decide to move their data center responsibilities “outside.” (OK. End of commercial.)
Of course, the article concludes, “Internal IT operations will still be responsible for the last 10 feet of cable, so they’ll have to be even more aware of their users’ needs… This might be a rebirth of the jack-of-all-trades who can interface with users, make the software do what they want, talk to the back-end guys. Those jobs will be around for a long time.”
You can read the entire InfoWorld article here.
