Australian DC spend set to hit $2.5bn in 2015

Spending on data centres by Australian organisations is on the rise, but the number of data centres in operation in the nation is in decline, according to Gartner.

Total data centre spend by Australian organisations is forecast to grow to $2.5 billion this year from $2.3 billion in 2014, the research firm said.

But a focus on agility and improving data centre economics means a continuing consolidation of the number of data centres in use.

Gartner estimates that are 62,314 data centres operating in Australia, but only 11 of these are classed as large data centres - containing at least 1000 racks and/or spanning at least 20,000 square feet.

A further 78 are enterprise data centres with at least 250 racks. The vast majority are single-rack or small-scale deployments.

Speaking at the opening keynote of the Gartner Infrastructure, Operations and Data Centre Summit 2015 in Sydney yesterday, Gartner Managing Vice President Michele Caminos said the convergence of technology trends including cloud, social, mobile and the IoT are necessitating a new approach to data centres.

“The future data centre is moving toward a more fluid architecture, focusing on workflow relative to how it interoperates and collaborates with other systems and cloud components to support digital business, rather than workload,” she said.

“It is also focused on what the work is doing and supporting, rather than where it is located. Organisations have to look at their data centre environment at a much higher level today.”

Gartner said the industry is specifically shifting focus to the integrated data centre, which shares six key technology characteristics - data centres that are software defined; make use of optimised resources, hybrid alternatives and new infrastructure models; improve operations management; and focus on non-stop IT.

Image courtesy of Sean Ellis under CC