Data Center Trends & Predictions For 2023 And Beyond

Facilitating the storage, management, and processing of colossal amounts of data, data centers continue to gain popularity among organizations ranging from government departments to retailers of all sizes.

In fact, between 2021 and 2030, the data center market is projected to grow by 10%. Data center construction has also been increasing in recent years, creating more jobs in the field.

Read ahead to learn about 8 trends and predictions for 2023 and beyond for the rapidly growing data center industry. 

1. Better data protection and focus on security

By 2025, the volume of data generated worldwide is predicted to exceed 180 zettabytes, which amounts to an annual growth of a whopping 40%. As the amount of data generated increases, so does vulnerability to security breaches.

This data may be critical to the operations of organizations, and data loss may seriously impair an organization’s strategic and decision-making capabilities. Data centers such as Macquarie Data Centres must, therefore, implement robust security measures to ensure the protection of important data.

In the coming years, better data protection is expected through both physical and logical security. Measures may include, for instance, improved facial recognition technology and drones to build access-control.   

Further adoption of ‘zero trust’ technologies, which prevent any user from connecting to the network without permission, is also expected.  

2. Increase in data center jobs

Data center jobs are expected to increase by 2% through 2023 and 3% by 2025. The industry offers several positions including:

• Project managers who create plans, track progress, test equipment, write reports, and perform all administrative and management functions for projects.
• Data center technicians to monitor and maintain conditions in the systems, and to respond to any problems as they arise.
• Production leaders to manage data center technicians in maintaining the data center environment.
• Engineers to build and provide support to the computing environment and hardware.
• Facility engineers who manage critical operations such as ensuring proper working of Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems and Building Management Systems (BMS).  
• Electricians to troubleshoot and fix any problems that arise with the electrical equipment and systems.  

Soon more data centers will need more manpower to handle more technical work and in order to equip yourself with the knowledge to handle technology you might need a diploma of information technology with TSA.

3. Greater use of digital tools and artificial intelligence

The COVID-19 pandemic increased the move towards software automation and artificial intelligence — a trend that increased the need to ramp up the development of data centers. Data centers have evolved to be less dependent on humans, and this evolution does not seem to be reversing in a post-COVID world. 

Data centers will continue to use digital tools — such as upstream computer simulations and tests for access control, electricity, heating costs, etc. — to streamline and optimize their operations. 

4. Move towards software virtualization

Software virtualization allows a computer server to work with more than one virtual system by creating an abstraction layer over computer hardware that allows its elements (such as processors, memory stores, etc.) to be divided into multiple virtual computers.

This process helps to bring down hardware-related costs as a greater amount of work can be done with fewer physical systems. 

5. Adjusting to 5G adoption

With the continued development of technology, the world is becoming increasingly interconnected. Replicating this pattern, 5G technology has begun to be adopted rapidly across sectors and industries.

5G relies on zero latency and ultra-fast data speed, which require investment in new software and hardware.

Data centers are expected to invest in the changes needed to adjust to 5G adoption.

6. Rising need for small data

While big data refers to humongous data sets that cannot be stored, managed, and manipulated using traditional data-processing software, small data is data in a format and volume that makes it accessible for human comprehension. 

Small data is actionable and accessible, and is crucial in helping humans make informed decisions.

According to Forbes, small data can be understood as “a paradigm to facilitate fast, cognitive analysis of the most vital data in situations where time, bandwidth, or energy expenditure are of the essence.”  

As distributed enterprises increase, so will the need for small data in order to process information and respond to issues quickly.  

7. Addressing issues arising from high density of infrastructure

In order to meet increasing computational requirements, especially with the use of artificial intelligence, technology companies are competing to build better, more innovative CPUs. 

CPUs are becoming increasingly dense to process big data, but are being housed in a limited space. With more and more dense infrastructure housed in a small space, data centers are challenged with ensuring the efficient dissipation of the heat produced.

In 2023 and beyond, it is expected that data centers will simultaneously employ liquid cooling on high-density racks and traditional cooling on low-density racks. 

8. Increased adoption of environmental stability measures

Contributing 2% of the total global greenhouse gas emissions, data centers have a significant impact on climate change and the environment. As a result, there is increasing need and awareness of implementing measures to make data centers more environment friendly. 

Pressure from customers, investors, and regulators has galvanized the data center industry to make changes to support the environment. 

Data centers companies have started taking steps such as recycling and reusing equipment, using renewable energy, and even creating underwater data centers.