The 2024 State of the Data Center report marks the fifth year that Foundry (an IDC Inc. company) has surveyed hundreds of CIOs, CTOs and other IT decision-makers to understand their digital transformation strategies, including the adoption of hybrid cloud as the underlying IT architecture of choice.
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I think what makes the report unique is the combination of quantitative research, which identifies current technologies in use to achieve evergreen goals such as security and cost reductions, coupled with the quotes from the very people who are implementing those technologies. In addition to the survey, Foundry conducted in-depth interviews with seven senior technology executives from enterprise organizations in the financial services, healthcare, retail and SaaS sectors. You’ll see that these executives pass on insights that could help improve your own IT and digitization strategies.
I’ll point to three topics discussed in the report to give you a taste of their “secret sauce.”
Collaboration
Companies are not silos that work in isolation. They have teams across the world working on ideas. Their digital ecosystems and supply chain are very distributed, and they depend on connecting with applications, data and customers in the same building, across town and in another geography. Business success has always depended on collaboration and, as digital transformation has progressed, collaboration is more dependent on interconnection.
Interconnection and Direct Cloud Connections
It’s sometimes difficult for people to imagine what a direct connection in a data center is. However, most people know what a flash drive is: an external storage device that connects to a computer as a plug-in device.
Plugging the drive into a USB port creates a direct connection offering super-fast, optimally secure data transfer. What if you could have essentially the same type of configuration between your enterprise infrastructure, clouds and the entities you collaborate with?
You can, and it happens in colocation data centers. You can learn how and the cost and performance advantages of direct connections to clouds and cross connections to digital ecosystems in the report.
Data Cost Reductions
Data may be the new gold, but it is anything but rare. Organizations in all industries recognize the value of collecting, analyzing and transporting it. The problem is that massive volumes of data can make doing those things extremely bandwidth and compute-intensive, which is both costly and difficult to implement.
Taming data costs while improving performance is possible when data storage, compute and access can occur seamlessly. For that to occur, data transport must be as direct as possible.
Obviously, artificial intelligence is the most prolific and perhaps most important data-generating technology to date. You might be surprised to learn that colocation can be an ideal location for AI workloads, as part of a continuum between insourced and outsourced AI workloads.
Read the 2024 State of the Data Center Report
The goal of this blog is to pique your interest in the 2024 State of the Data Center Report. I am confident you will find valuable insights from peers, and the read will be well worth your time. If you have read this far, I’ll reward you by revealing one of the key findings:
95% of respondents said that direct connections are vital for cost savings, enhanced security and optimized network performance in a multi-cloud strategy.
That kind of information can help you make confident decisions about your hybrid IT modernization strategy. There is so much more in the report.
When you are ready, CoreSite will be ready to help plan and execute a strategy for interconnection that will drive the collaboration and digital transformation you seek.