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October 15, 2019

Hyperscale Datacenters Lift Many Boats

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Soaring demand for hyperscale datacenters and colocation services is having a ripple effect within the value chain that builds and integrates those services, a new survey finds.

As edge deployments and software-defined infrastructure drove overall hyperscale datacenter spending last year to an estimated $120 billion, the survey released by Schneider Electric notes that growing demand also highlights continuing skills gap. The ongoing skilled labor shortage was the top challenge across the datacenter ecosystem, according to the survey released on Monday (Oct. 14).

“Hyperscale has fundamentally transformed the datacenter market. Its scale and complexity have had a similarly profound impact on what we call the ‘value chain,’ the ecosystem of people involved in bringing such immense capacity to life,” said Frank Nash, Schneider Electric’s senior director of secure power.

Most of the datacenter ecosystem—81 percent of those infrastructure suppliers polled—believe the ongoing shift to hyperscale datacenters will boost their business prospects, the survey found. As the amount of data, distributed applications and other real-time capabilities emerge, infrastructure vendors also reported growing pressure to complete projects on tighter schedules. Those pressures have exacerbated a skills shortage while raising concerns over datacenter security.

The Schneider Electric (OTCMKTS: SBGSY) survey squares with other market forecasts of explosive growth in hyperscale datacenters, an increase driven in large part by the skyrocketing data volumes and heightened demand for cloud-based analytics tools and databases.

Synergy Research Group recently reported the number of hyperscale datacenters has reached more than 430, with another 132 planned. About 40 percent of major cloud and Internet datacenter sites are based in the U.S., it said.

The market tracker previously forecast that global traffic in cloud datacenters would reach 19.5 zettabytes annually by 2021. Using another metric, market analyst IDC pegged the sum of the world’s data—the Datasphere—at 175 zettabytes by 2025.

Those projections along with their ripple effect on datacenter builders and technical consultants are combining to create what the Schneider Electric study concludes is an “hyperscale inflection point in the datacenter value chain.”

The trick for these vendors will be finding enough trained personnel to handle the coming wave of AI applications. Those application are likely to include new tools for automating datacenter operations.

Recent items:

Big Data Driving Hyperscale Datacenter Surge

The State of Storage: Cloud, IoT and Datacenter Trends

Global Datasphere to Hit 175 Zettabytes by 2025, IDC Says

 

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