Building a Next Generation Data Centre (NGDC) is fast becoming key to the digital transformation that more and more companies are now pursuing. The NGDC embraces digital transformation by delivering a cloud-first architecture that is designed to be more adaptable and responsive to the demands of users.
Digital transformation for a business demands that the IT innovation driving change, aligns with a well-planned business strategy. Its key goal is to serve customers, employees and partners through:
- supporting continuous improvement in business operations
- disrupting existing business models and expanding into new markets
- Inventing additional businesses with new innovative business models.
According to the 2017 Voice of the Enterprise Storage Budgets and Workload Survey by 451 Advisory Research: The top IT environment goal for 2017 – ahead of cost reduction and improving reliability – was improving IT’s ability to respond faster to business needs. This goal is aligned with the motivations typically associated with digital transformation since the desired outcome is invariably to improve the agility of the business in making faster, more accurate decisions and delivering a competitive advantage. What is driving this? Think exponential data growth and Cloud!
Exponential Data Growth and Cloud
Data is now a commodity with a high trade value. Not only is data growing at an exponential rate with new devices creating more and more data every day, but there is also growth as companies learn how to manage this data and make it useful to their business.
Cloud has been delivering data storage connected to AI, Machine Learning and data scrapping applications, which the Cloud then harvests into useful and purposeful business opportunities.
However, cloud-based storage is not always the right strategy for all organisations and their customers. For many organisations their data privacy and control methods prevent migration to the Cloud, they are often heavily invested in traditional IT infrastructure and are unsure of what options are available to them. Enter the Next Generation Data Centre!
What is the Next Generation Data Centre? (NGDC)
The NGDC is a Cloud like data management infrastructure but is usually software-defined and API driven with low management overhead which is being heavily policy driven but can flex at the push of a button.
These technologies have strong Cloud integration points and allow developers to leverage the data stored in them to deliver new business opportunities. These are as close to Cloud technologies as you can have in a Data Centre.
Examples of these technologies are All Flash Storage appliance. These have a simple integration with orchestration engines and have the ability to tier to object storage for longer term and global distribution. These Flash Storage systems are typically Software-defined and leverage APIs and workflow automation.
The other transformational technology is Object Storage, especially where it has multi-site erasure coding as this can provide data protection across a global namespace whilst also delivering access to data from many-to-one and one-to-many users across the namespace just like it is in a ‘Cloud’.
Digital Sense and NetApp working together to help customers building Next Generation Data Centres
Digital Sense utilises NetApp’s architecture to store, secure and move customer data between clouds. Data is at the core of digital transformation and is distributed over multiple locations. This data is more dynamic and is constantly changing which requires you to know where the data is and its source.
The various types of data require a Next Generation Data Centre where the customer can harness the power of public Cloud, build next-generation applications and modernise storage through data management. Using NetApp’s Next Generation Data Centre architecture, Digital Sense is able to offer its customers a truly holistic Cloud environment and freely move data between on-premise and public Clouds.
The NetApp infrastructure allows Digital Sense to offer services in the Way That Makes Sense for you.
- Purpose Built systems,
- Infrastructure as a Service,
- Software Defined Storage,
- Storage as a Service,
- Data Protection as a Service and,
- Object Storage as a Service.
Read about Data Security in Queensland:
Did you know that you have certain statutory and legislative data protection obligations if you operate a business in Queensland? Find out in our article: Data Security Best Practices For Queensland Businesses
Digital Sense and NetApp for Next Gen Data Centres
At Digital Sense, we can help you discern the “where, when, and why” aspects of your unstructured data challenges. To set up a free workshop with our team, contact us today!
