Data is the lifeblood of today’s global digital economy, powering a wide range of industrial activities, from retail and manufacturing to infrastructure and transportation, and data centers are the backbone of this influx of data. As the proliferation of data in our digital world accelerates at an alarming rate, more than 175ZB of data is expected to be generated annually by 2025.

As digital transformation is driving data-intensive applications such as IoT and cloud computing, the role of the data center is also expanding, becoming an important intersection of personal, business and economic data. As part of an ever-growing business in the modern world, data centers impact many aspects of how a business operates, including data backup and recovery, networking, website hosting, email management and security, powering the cloud to store applications and e-commerce transactions. To meet global demand, hyperscale providers have been building data centers and expanding their fleets over the past few years. However, the complexities of operating and maintaining these facilities are creating an unprecedented set of challenges that must be met with new approaches.

The world has changed significantly and the way we do business has changed. This change will continue to accelerate. Industrial organizations in all industries are producing and using large amounts of data and therefore need data centers to run their businesses. In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, increased remote work and virtual collaboration ensured that demand for data centers remains strong. Hyperscale suppliers in particular will continue to press ahead with their expansion plans, and we haven't seen a negative impact on this market so far. However, there is a growing need for remote monitoring and management of data centers across a wide area or even a global geographic area.

As the global recession forces organizations to re-evaluate their offerings and right-size their operations, we will see more companies move their workloads to the data center. In today's rapidly changing environment, a data center is more than a safe and secure facility with reliable power and networking; it is a valuable addition to many organizations' infrastructures, a reliable extension of IT teams, and an integral element of success.

The COVID-19 pandemic has paved the way for digital transformation, as businesses transform how they operate and reinvent themselves to deal with new social distancing measures, restricted movement and supply disruptions. As the post-pandemic reality sets in, the "new normal" will see a new digital age rapidly approaching. Digital capabilities will increasingly be a barometer of economic resilience, and the industries that can thrive in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis are those that can fully digitize. The hospitality industry, for example, is really suffering because it's only partially digitized, which is why dine-in restaurants are empty, but online delivery services are booming. In fact, those industries that are able to remain fully online will finally realize the significant benefits of digitization once the lockdown ends.

Cloud computing is also changing the design and deployment of data centers, and while cloud solutions are often delivered over the Internet by third parties, it is now increasingly common to see this model applied within an organization's data center as a private cloud. While industry research indicates a major shift in mindset towards the cloud, the traditional data center model and the cloud are not mutually exclusive. Data center transformation will continue to evolve, and CIOs now see cloud not as an “or” but an “and” compared to traditional data center colocation.

The shift to a new computing environment has undoubtedly added complexity, which has wide-ranging implications for how IT managers protect data from malicious attacks or compromises. This is why integrating security into data center designs is critical. As the world economy becomes increasingly reliant on digital infrastructure, meeting the highest standards of governance for these critical assets is both a social and a commercial obligation. Security in particular presents evolving challenges, given that successful business continuity depends on a secure environment.

The pandemic has reinforced the importance of data centers and cloud computing to society. In the early days of the crisis, the data center industry was the backbone of the global economy, supporting a massive shift to online services. The pandemic is a watershed event for the world and a defining moment for data centers and the cloud. For many organizations, digital transformation expected to take years has been compressed into days and weeks. Entire industries are being reset, and digital infrastructure is front and center of transformation. The data center industry must quickly adapt to complex new realities. Demand for cloud services will skyrocket in some areas, but shrink in other verticals.

As the data market grows exponentially, the intersection of vision and the right technology will be required to create a global digital infrastructure to drive growth in the years ahead.