Datacenters continue to evolve. ServerWatch looks at developments over the past year and what to expect in 2010.
If this past year in datacenter technology could be summed up in one word, it would be “rethinking.” For the last several years, it seemed like people just threw together datacenters all into one or more buildings, but this year, thanks to the pressures of the economy, IT managers finally stopped and took stock of what they were doing.
In more than a few situations, it was a case of “Gee, we should have thought about that sooner.” For example, it slowly dawned on management that while the IT department, from the CIO down, was responsible for the computers in a datacenter, IT never got the electric bill. That went to operations.
As a result, IT was stuffing the datacenter full of power-draining equipment while giving the operations department chest pains over the electric bill. Nothing like an economic downturn to make IT and operations start talking to each other and realize what they are trying to do.
