Data Centers and Cloud Can Work Together to Power the Future

Data Centers and the cloud are critical parts of the digital infrastructure and depend on each other. Making advances in data center technology enhances the effectiveness of the cloud and vice versa. Leveraging data centers and the cloud together help businesses fuel limitless future product innovation and service optimization for their customers.

From the start, the cloud is used as a solution to manage on-premises infrastructure. With the increasing demand for data and computing, organisations have realised the need for more flexibility than a 'cloud-only' strategy can provide. This is where colocation data centers still lead the way.

Cloud provider giants like Google, Microsoft and Amazon require physical data centers to provide their services. Even though they have their own data centers around the globe and are leading the charge in building new data centers, they also lease about 70% of their data center footprint from data centers owned by other companies.

So how do data centers help their clients make the most of hybrid architectures? The factors like interconnectivity, agility, and accessibility play a significant role.

Interconnectivity

For an organisation that operates digitally, distributing the workload across infrastructure becomes a major priority; however, shifting those ever-growing workloads from one system to another is challenging. One solution for this can be decreasing the distance workloads and data need to travel.

If you want to reduce the time your services take to reach end-users, you would like to place your workloads as close to them as possible. Based on your requirement, cloud providers can offer a direct, private, high-speed connection to the cloud—bypassing the public Internet entirely.

Agility

The synergy between cloud providers and data centers provides great results to make customers more agile. Data centers take customers closer to the cloud through direct connections and on-ramps. This proximity yields plenty of benefits.

Operating cloud-based applications becomes much more efficient, reliable, and cost-effective with the help, support and services provided by the data center. When cloud applications run smoothly, it allows you to devote more time and resources to other critical activities—innovation.

Accessibility

The cloud is a cost-effective and ideal solution for applications and workloads that don't require significant mobility. A cloud-based data center is easy to access via smartphones and devices with security credentials to support remote working models.

If your applications require a high level of fluidity and flexibility, ingress and egress fees can quickly change any cost savings in the cloud. The hardware containing your data could be anywhere within a cloud provider's entire footprint.

Interconnectivity, agility and accessibility are not only reasons to use cloud or data centers, but you also need to understand the necessity for balance and diversity within your infrastructure. When they work together effortlessly, cloud and colocation can intensify each other's strengths. Cloud and data center providers can work together to build better solutions to empower their customers with solutions and services that drive innovation in the future.

At IDC Technologies , we have been helping organisations to move to the cloud through the right strategy, roadmap, workflow model and ecosystem collaborations.