Empowering Modern Technology: Benefits and Importance of Data Centers

The term “data center” would suggest that it’s a centralized facility for storing an organization’s data. That’s true, but a data center is much more. Broadly speaking, a data center houses an organization’s IT equipment and hosts its applications and data. Data centers also enable advanced technologies such as 5G cellular, streaming media, and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

Learn more in our “Data Centers Explained” article.

That makes the data center one of the most important components of the modern enterprise. Almost every organization, no matter how small, maintains its own data center, accesses a third-party facility (Ex. cloud data center or colocation data center), or both.

Benefits of Data Centers

The data center concept arose from the early days of the mainframe. At that time, IT equipment was enormous and required controlled environmental conditions. It made sense to house it in a specialized facility separate from the rest of the business. 

Today, IT equipment is far more powerful than legacy mainframes and can be deployed almost anywhere. Smaller organizations often put IT equipment in a storeroom, office, or even an empty cubicle. However, there is still significant value to using a data center, even if it hosts just one server.

Improved Availability

Although today’s IT equipment is somewhat tolerant of variations in environmental conditions, extreme temperatures and humidity can shorten its lifespan and cause downtime. Dust, moisture, and other contaminants can have a devastating effect. A well-designed data center provides the conditions needed to optimize reliability. 

Increased Efficiency

It’s challenging to work on IT equipment that’s crammed into a cubicle. Troubleshooting problems is hard when the equipment is scattered in different locations. A centralized facility eliminates these headaches while freeing up office and storage space. High-quality racks and cabinets make it easy to access equipment, while cable management solutions simplify network troubleshooting. 

Enhanced Security

The typical office space lacks the security needed to prevent unauthorized access to IT equipment. Best-in-class data centers incorporate a range of physical security controls, including barriers, video surveillance systems, and alarms. Badge and smart card readers, biometric scanners, and other access controls prevent unauthorized personnel from entering the facility. They also maintain an audit trail of when and where people entered. Fire suppression systems use “clean” agents to minimize damage to sensitive equipment. 

Scalability and Cost-Efficiency

If your IT equipment is crammed into one side of a storeroom, you don’t have much room to grow. Data centers are designed to scale quickly to support additional compute and storage capacity. Co-location data centers provide these capabilities without the overhead of building and operating your own data center. Often referred to as modular data centers, companies are increasingly adopting prefabricated approaches to data center development to improve speed-to-market and scale more quickly.

Importance of Data Centers

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of a well-designed and maintained data center. These facilities are designed to optimize the operation of many critical IT functions. Here are a few examples.

Data Accessibility

Organizations today need 24x7 access to critical data. Data centers help ensure that servers and storage are available around the clock. 

Global Connectivity

Data centers have the connectivity needed to give users access to data regardless of location. This is critically important with today’s remote, mobile, and hybrid workstyles.

Data Protection

The physical and logical security of the data center helps ensure that critical data is protected from unauthorized access and cyberattacks. Centralized data is also easier to back up. 

Business Continuity

Best-in-class data centers have redundant power and cooling, backup generators, and other components to reduce the risk of unplanned downtime.

Data Centers Are Here for Everyone

As technology evolves, data centers adapt. The industry can no longer rely solely on traditional centralized data centers. Different types of data centers are emerging to satisfy the shortcomings of the traditional model. Small, distributed edge data centers are helping reduce latency for a variety of personal and professional applications and improving network overall network efficiency. Massive hyperscale facilities serve as the backbone of the cloud. Modular data centers are improving speed-to-market and driving construction efficiencies. Colocation (multi-tenant) data centers are serving the  And the list goes on.

Enconnex: Your Data Center Solutions Provider

Enconnex is here to help improve the infrastructure of data centers of all shapes and sizes. Many of our solutions were designed based on customer feedback to address their top challenges. Contact one of our specialists to discuss how the right data center infrastructure solutions can unlock the full potential of your data center.