Transforming the corporate engine room
The data centre is the engine room of modern business. Highly secure and carefully managed, the data centre provides the horsepower for millions or even billions of mission-critical transactions and processes, and the storage capacity for vast amounts of data. It is the focal point for IT investment, the core of the modern corporation.
But nothing in computing stands still, and a series of major changes is sweeping through the data centre. Responding to both business pressures and technological innovation, many large businesses are in the process of refitting, modernising or even rebuilding their data centres. It is a difficult, expensive and challenging process that has been likened to “changing the engines of a 747 in mid-flight”.
This exciting project was the main theme of The Future of the Data Centre 2008. There are four clear business challenges on the agenda of IT directors, CIOs and data centre managers:
• How to make the IT infrastructure more agile and adaptive
• How to make the data centre more manageable and governable.
• How to make the data centre more efficient and less-resource intensive
• How to ensure that it is robust and secure At Information Age’s The Future of the Data Centre 2008, speakers and delegates shared expertise and experiences in these areas.
The conference explored some of the many innovative and powerful technologies available to help managers meet these challenges, some of which are commercially proven, and others that are still immature. These included:
• Multicore processors, blade servers and storage area networks;
• Virtualization of processors and storage
• Advanced and autonomic management
• Rapid provisioning
• Grid and utility computing
• Advanced methods for power management and data centre design
The Future of the Data Centre 2008 helped senior managers understand and navigate their way through the technology and the business issues. Companies supporting the conference helped achieve this goal, by updating delegates on their current technology strategy, through exclusive presentations in the Vendor Workshops.
More than 150 decision makers from the UK’s largest companies attended The Future of the Data Centre 2008. These included CIOs and IT directors, data centre managers and builders, and chief technology officers. Both in-house and commercial data centre operators attended the conference.
Information Age conferences offer delegates a rich experience, with significant knowledge- building and networking opportunities. All refreshments – including the mid-conference dinner – are provided free of charge. Delegate feedback has been consistently positive in its approval of the content and format.
