Sovereignty, security, sustainability, and supply: ServerChoice announces its data centre predictions for 2022

“The upheaval caused by the pandemic over the past two years has meant that many enterprises have been forced to embark upon rapid digital transformation journeys. Undoubtedly, due to the uncertainty we’ve seen many businesses quickly opt to implement public cloud services and the growth of hyperscalers over the course of the pandemic is apparent,” says Adam Bradshaw, Commercial Director at ServerChoice.

“However, as society has levelled out and is beginning to firmly resemble something much closer to the pre-pandemic world, many enterprises will now be reassessing their long-term infrastructure plans.”

With this in mind, ServerChoice outlines the key trends it expects to influence the data centre industry in 2022:

1. Increased requirement for cybersecurity

The continued frequency of cybersecurity incidents into 2022 is only going to serve to accelerate this trend. Cybersecurity measures are going to be taken as seriously as it deserves to be in the new year, rather than being treated as a monotonous annual training exercise. Alongside this greater awareness, businesses will be looking to boost their infrastructure's resilience to these bad actors, primarily through storing their mission critical applications in more IT environments onsite or at small scale datacentres. 

2. Decreasing public cloud user figures 

2022 is going to see a growth in alternative data hosting methods and a subsequent shrinking of public clouds user figures. Enterprises have now had a long enough timeframe to assess if public cloud is applicable to their business. The benefits of better security and data sovereignty afforded by services such as colocation will outweigh the benefits of public cloud to many. 

3. Increased focus on sustainability

The climate crisis is becoming a more pressing issue each day, with consumer demand for action and sustainability measures growing at the same speed. Being heavy energy consumers, data centres are going to face more scrutiny than most in this regard. As customers reorganise their demands and prioritise sustainability, data centres will have to take action in order to remain competitive, promoting innovations in areas such as liquid chip-based cooling and data hall design layouts. 

4. Continued supply chain disruption 

Data centres are constantly relying on continuous supply lines to ensure their mission of maintaining uptime, making data centre providers acutely aware of the supply issue facing the nation. Although cars are no longer queuing on forecourts for fuel, the uncertainty over trade agreements is likely to continue the supply chain disruption in the long term. Responsible data centres that have long standing contracts in place should be able to avoid the issues but those that haven’t will be leaving themselves exposed. 

Adam Bradshaw, Commercial Director at ServerChoice, added, “While no one can look into the future, 2022 will prove to be a very fruitful year for data centre providers. Those that can maintain supply chain continuity, while meeting the new demands for sustainability, sovereignty, and security stand to cultivate ample business opportunities.”