The cumulative growth of spending related to Cloud services in Spain will be 24%.
65% of infrastructure investments will be for relationship, knowledge and action systems to adapt the data center to new workloads.
 
The consulting firm IDC, in collaboration with Schneider Electric, has presented the conclusions of the FutureScape 2018 report, based on surveys of more than 500 IT managers and decision-makers from European companies with more than 30 servers installed and a minimum of 100 employees, analyzing the current situation and trends in the data center market.

In their report, IDC and Schneider Electric estimate that demand for data center space will continue to grow, reaching 590 million square meters in 2018. Specifically, space belonging to service providers will increase by 48.95 million square meters worldwide. Furthermore, service providers will account for 45.6% of new high-end data center construction in 2018. The study concludes that the data center of the future will be shaped by new workloads and IT diversification, and will be smarter and more energy-efficient, with an increase in microdatacenters and edge computing. As Michael Dalala, Vice President of the IT Division at Schneider Electric in Spain, stated, “These trends represent a clear opportunity for Schneider Electric, as experts in simplifying data center planning, design, and operation, providing business value by improving deployment speed, cost, and environment performance. These benefits translate into improved business expansion and faster market entry for new services in a rapidly growing market.”

Current Situation
: In recent years, changes in both business and technology have put pressure on traditional data centers:
- Most data centers were built to handle stable workloads or workloads that change at a predictable rate. The combination of mobility, social business, Big Data, and cloud computing has led to a proliferation of mobile devices and the data they create and store. According to IDC's Q2 2016 Black Book, cumulative growth in cloud-related spending in Spain is estimated at 24%.
- The location of many data centers is no longer suitable for current needs: Many data centers were built based on proximity to corporate headquarters, but in a context where customer focus and responsiveness are paramount, proximity to a network interconnection point, population centers, or customers is more relevant to the business.
- The maintenance and operation of traditional data centers are consuming an increasing number of human resources, which must be dedicated to tasks such as configurations and incident resolution. However, the organization needs these resources to develop new initiatives and innovate.
- Data center age: A significant number of data centers are over five years old. This situation generates inefficiencies in the short and medium term.

What Will the Data Center of the Future Look Like?
According to the findings of a study by IDC and Schneider Electric, demand for data center space is expected to continue growing, increasing from 482.2 million square meters in 2013 to 590 million square meters in 2018. Specifically, data centers belonging to service providers will increase by 48.95 million square meters, representing 45.6% of new high-end data center construction in 2018. Many IT organizations recognize that data center design, construction, and expansion are exceeding their internal capabilities. For this reason, they are adopting outsourcing strategies. Some companies will continue to build and operate these facilities, but the general trend will be to entrust these projects to specialist companies.

According to predictions from IDC's FutureScape study, the characteristics of the data center of the future will need to adapt to new workloads and IT diversification:
- New workloads: 65% of data center infrastructure investments will be for relationship, knowledge, and action systems, compared to maintaining current systems of record. The previous data center model was geared towards managing employee information, back-office operations, and internal information recording systems. With the explosion of the internet and mobile telephony, companies will invest more in Big Data systems, analytics, and Internet of Things control systems, requiring better external communications infrastructure.
- IT diversification: 65% of current companies' IT assets will reside in cloud environments in data centers off-site, while a third of IT staff will be employed by cloud providers. Companies will operate in diversified environments that include different types of deployments (both on-premises and off-premises) and a broad portfolio of cloud services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS). Organizations will need to manage these assets distributed across various third-party data centers. IT departments will need to be able to implement their operations considering the assets, technical capabilities, and experience of different service providers.
- Intelligent Data Center: 60% of companies will use data centers with an advanced level of instrumentation, leveraging automation to increase efficiency and link IT spending to business value. Many organizations will use automated data center management systems, freeing up resources for other value-added business tasks. This scenario implies that the new data center will have a high level of sensorization. On the one hand, this will transform the data center itself into an Internet of Things environment, enabling advantages such as proactive maintenance, as well as greater resource and energy efficiency. On the other hand, managing this sensor technology will further increase the amount of data in the organization.

- Micro-datacenters and Edge Computing: 30% of IT assets will reside in micro-datacenters and off-site service points (Edge Computing). The proliferation of mobile devices, cloud-based services, and the Internet of Things (IoT) is redefining the physical topology of data centers. Information flows between different data sources must be coordinated more efficiently, and both large and small businesses are redesigning and investing in their networks. This type of micro-datacenter also facilitates the deployment of applications located in arrays of 1 to 10 racks.

- Energy efficiency: Increasingly stringent environmental legislation, along with corporate sustainability policies from many organizations, is driving energy efficiency in data centers. Eight percent of new data centers will use renewable or alternative energy sources as their primary power source, while new cooling and rack architectures will continue to improve energy efficiency. Over the next three years, operators will progressively introduce renewable energy sources, providing a more reliable power source with reasonable and predictable costs. This strategy will begin as a supplement to existing energy sources and evolve into the primary energy source. While this trend is primarily associated with cost savings, operators are also seeking positive environmental impacts from their operations, which will make them more attractive to their customers.
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