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I’ve been using my mobile banking app for several years now and I have to say, it’s a time saver. Think about what you had to do 10 years ago to deposit a check… get your keys, hop in your car, drive to the nearest bank branch (hope that it’s open), walk in, fill out a deposit slip, wait in line, and ask the teller to deposit your check. Today, I deposit checks and pay bills, whether I’m at home or away, using my smart phone.

This is how easy it should be to monitor your data centers. Yet, many data center managers depend on a specific PC, with a VPN login, in order to log into a data center monitoring system. Avoiding these hassles is one of the benefits to digital data center remote monitoring solutions that allow you to check on the health of your data center from the comfort of your own home.

Technology Trends Seen from the Expert

I wrote a White Paper 237 reviewing this topic in hopes of informing data center managers how technology trends are coming together to improve their roles. I also demonstrated it in our Meet the Expert video series watch it here.

For example, cutting the time spent logging into systems, or removing the stress of not knowing an issue’s status, not knowing who is on call, or the general health of your data center at any time. In the paper I go through seven trends that are influencing data center monitoring. Let me touch on just some of them below.

Top Influences to Data Center Monitoring

Embedded systems – There are so many more sensors, notifications, and alarms available on data center systems today (i.e. UPS, cooling units) then there were 10 years ago… approximately 300% more. With this much data, we should be able to run our data centers much more efficiently.

Cybersecurity – The Data Center Science Center wrote White Paper 239 detailing this topic which focuses on a secure development lifecycle (SDL). SDL is a process by which security is considered and evaluated throughout the development lifecycle of products and solutions. Learning about a vendor’s SDL is a good start to evaluating their digital services.

Big Data analytics – A key technology that gets us closer to the day where condition-based maintenance (also referred to as predictive maintenance) tells you what is about to fail.  I think this will significantly reduce the amount of unplanned downtime data center managers see today.

Mobile computing – A team of people working to maintain the operations of a data center shouldn’t need to be tied to a PC. Mobile computing helps alleviate this burden by allowing managers to float between locations without being disconnected from daily operations.

Say Goodbye to Reactive, Redundant Maintenance

So, what do these trends mean for you as a data center professional? I can sum it up by saying that the job you have today, will look very different in five years. Think about how many reactive tasks you have today that could easily be absorbed by automation and machine learning. Like what do you do when you get a barrage of alarms? You try to figure out the root cause and go on a mission to uncover the problem. Well, in the future, this will be taken care of by machine learning, possibly augmented by a team of expert monitoring service experts. All these alarms form a pattern that likely have a known solution. How much time have you spent on the phone with tech support trying to get to the bottom of an issue? Digital remote monitoring service solutions will allow you to generate a trouble ticket via your smart phone without having to explain the same problem to five different support reps.

And Hello to a Proactive Future

The elimination of wasted time will leave you open to do more proactive tasks like anticipating the needs of your internal customers, researching trends in the IT and data center space, and preparing for them ahead of time. Understand more about these trends improving the roles of data center professionals and how to capitalize on efficient technology trends by reading White paper 237 or watching our Meet the Expert video again.

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