Pandemic Fuels Data Center Growth
March 15, 2021
In a year full of turmoil and strife caused by an unexpected pandemic, data centers were quickly recognized for their crucial presence in all lives, for maintaining communication and knowledge during a period of sudden change for humanity.
Data center operators and major services held fast throughout the troubled, early days as they were identified as truly mission critical. Companies large and small rapidly scaled up workloads with cloud service providers so employees could access their normal applications; schools and universities moved online as students attended classes remotely; and all people looked to the Internet for entertainment as they stayed home for days at a time.
Several trends that were beginning prior to the year accelerated rapidly throughout 2020. Businesses were forced to continue their IT transformation with a suddenly fully remote workforce, and many moved workloads straight to major cloud services. While most of this will remain in the public cloud environment, costs and regulatory concerns may lead to some moving to a colocation or even on-premises situation. As a result, increased cloud adoption and hybrid IT scenarios are fueling growth in the data center sector for both established and emerging markets.