2019 Data Center Predictions: In Review

2019 brought significant innovations to the world of data centers, colocation, cloud and connectivity. Reflecting on the advancements of 2019 and Digital Realty’s 2019 predictions, Sherri Liebo, SVP of Global Marketing, shares how last year’s predictions panned out.

Video summary included below:

Hello, my name is Sherri Liebo and I'm part of the executive team here at Digital Realty. It seems just a few months ago, but it was a year ago where we made predictions about 2019. And we're here now to review how did that pan out.

Last year, we talked about how data center cooling techniques were going to be important. And in fact, over the year this has absolutely panned out. For example, this year we entered into a strategic relationship with NVIDIA, because NVIDIA with their application for AI requires lots of liquid cooling.

And, we were able to offer NVIDIA's customers data centers in our portfolio that allow clients to absolutely deploy quickly. So in fact, with AI and all of those trends, liquid cooling techniques are going to be more important than ever. That includes everything from more traditional liquid cooling to more futuristic liquid immersion.

One of the predictions we made is that our clients would be looking for more private connections and proximate--meaning, close to the other companies and firms that they need be with, like customers or Cloud providers. One great example of that is one of our clients in Europe, which is Clear Channel.

In fact, that is exactly what they did. They chose the Digital Realty platform, with a private network connection into one of our data centers that was close to their Cloud provider. Once we established the relationship, they liked what we had to offer and are expanding with us.

Multi-Cloud Migration was another prediction and that's absolutely panned out over the last year. In fact, Gartner cited that the vast majority of their clients are driving toward a Multi-Cloud adoption.

Hybrid Cloud was a prediction that wasn't hard to make but as I reflect on the year, it’s probably more appropriate to say it’s a hybrid IT strategy. Customers like Mavenir are looking at their IT infrastructure and they’re deciding what they put in the cloud, what they keep in their own data centers, and what they put in data centers that are closer to the cloud.

Our last prediction was around the Edge. We are still in the early stages with Edge, but with more data processed outside of traditional data centers than ever before, organizations are realizing they need this decentralized approach.

One great example of this is MOBITV, which really has worked with us to benefit from being in close proximity to the connectivity hubs that we have that will allow for low latency content distribution.

Well that’s a wrap for 2019. Be on the lookout for our 2020 predictions, soon to come.