Data Centers are the modern manufacturing. Beginning in the industrial revolution, if you didn’t plan out your manufacturing operation you were going to get left in the dust. Today, if you don’t protect, control and store your data then you will be left behind in this digital age. Everyone plans their manufacturing – there’s very little competitive advantage left – but not everyone thinks about their data centers yet.
The opportunity to manage data better is about more than a large specialty building full of servers. It’s about putting in place the systems that allow all of the processes (internally and externally) to merge and blend in the beautiful dance of data and numbers. If you think it’s about the building, then you are missing the point – just as so many didn’t originally understand the point of the assembly line. Making data work effectively is the new advantage.