Wonder

Research Outline

Prepared for Igor E. | Delivered September 4, 2019

Data Centers vs Cloud services in future

Goals

To obtain statistical data and estimates on the use of cloud services vs data centers in the future specifically related to the following: if they will become complementary or substitute technologies in future and its impact on SMEs and large companies, if there is shift towards cloud services in the coming years, the common size of data centers in the world in meters, and the revenue/profit that telecommunication companies receive from data center equipment.

Early Findings

The shift towards cloud servicesBill Kleyman, Executive Vice President of Digital Solutions at Switch who spoke at the Data Center World conference in 2019 data centers has stated that cloud will be the dominant model within the next 12 months and that "there’s now a better level of maturity and understanding what cloud really is about.”
The State of the Data Center report by AFCOM, Enterprise IT is becoming more cloud-like, with the increasing adaption of Linux containers and orchestration (35% of survey respondents), and the OpenStack platform (33%).
 Not all enterprise workloads will shift to the cloud. Based on the AFCOM survey findings, cloud technologies are expected to be incorporated into an enteprise in the form of private clouds (57%) vs public cloud (46%) or hybrid cloud models (35%).
Data centers: future outlookWhile research firms such as Gartner has predicted that "the data centers is dead" and that 80% of corporate data centers will be shut down by 2025, AFCOM has a different outlook on the future of data centers.
According to Kleyman, the data center market is continuing to bloom across the nation. AFCOM survey respondents across the board expect to expand their data center networks both in number and square footage.
On average, 10.3 data centers are expected to be built over the next 3 years. During the same time frame, 12.8 data centers per organization are expected to be renovated.
Data centers and cloud services: complements or substitutesBill Kleyman has further stated that the cloud will not replace data centers but will rather complement data centers.
Size of data centersAccording to survey findings, 48% of respondents have reported that their data centers are between 5,000-50,000 sq. ft while 16% said that it was between 100,000-500,000 sq. ft.
 
Over the next 3 years, 26% of respondents expect that their data centers will be between 100,000-500,000 sq. ft. 