Coming off the heels of a tumultuous 2020, IT management must be prepared to respond new challenges while also protecting and improving the performance of data centers and infrastructure.
2021 plans and projections are still being shaped by the far-reaching effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new report from Service Express points out. But,”Overall, IT has found new avenues to keep organizations operational and growing with resources and agility,” the report reads.
So, how can IT teams best strategize for the 2021 data center and beyond?
Get the full report.
Service Express surveyed 500 IT professionals nationwide for their insights into their current and future actions on a variety of topics from IT budgets to workload deployments, and compiled the highlights in the new 2021 report.
This report organizes responses and data garnered from this survey to provide helpful insight into how the IT industry is taking action today and planning for the future.
According to the report, the top priority for today’s IT professionals is strengthening security and privacy.
“Despite gains in security technology, threats evolve to find new ways to cause damage by stealing data, lowering productivity and locking company information,” said Todd Piper, Chief Information Officer at Service Express. “To limit risk, it is absolutely essential to focus on strengthening the human firewall. This is even more true with the massive shift to remote work due to COVID-19. Establishing employee security education programs and protocols, plus communicating security measures on a regular basis are effective in reducing individual-caused security issues and closing the window on breaches.”
And the top challenge for IT is budget and cost restrictions. Not surprisingly, the report also found that the most influential driver affecting IT decision-makers is price. Further, the most significant hardware maintenance challenge for IT management is price.
Service Express also points to how IT managers were trying to reduce costs in 2020. For most, consolidation was the route of choice.
The Service Express report focused on data center infrastructure covers the following:
- Examine the current outlook on strategic planning for data center infrastructure
- Identify the top priorities and challenges that IT professionals will encounter in the next 12-month cycle
- Share insights into workload deployment and cost reduction methods
- Insight from Todd Piper CIO, Service Express and Jake Blough, CTO, Service Express
Get the full “Data Center & Infrastructure Report” for 2021, courtesy of Service Express, for more on data center infrastructure strategies for the new year.
Data Center Frontier is edited by Rich Miller, the data center industry’s most experienced journalist. For more than 20 years, Rich has profiled the key role played by data centers in the Internet revolution.