Report Highlights 7 Colocation “Megatrends” and How to Use Them to Your Advantage

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Schneider Electric takes pride in partnering with our customers, and guiding them to the sorts of solutions that will bring them business success. One of the ways we do that is through industry events where we gather customers together, giving them to the opportunity to exchange ideas and learn from one another.

A great example of this is an event we held in Miami last November for some of our colocation provider customers. We pulled together 30 executives from 16 countries for a day-long discussion of industry trends. One of the highlights was an address from Bob Gill, Research Director in Gartner’s Data Center Strategies Group, who talked about colocation “megatrends.”

Following his address, we gathered the attendees for a roundtable discussion to exchange thoughts and ideas about these trends, and how best to deal with as well as take advantage of them. Seven of the trends Gill presented formed the basis of the roundtable discussion, namely:

• The changing face of the colocation buyer
• Industry structure, including mergers and acquisitions
• The Internet of Things and big data
• Edge computing
• Cloud computing and Internet Giants
• The impact of data center infrastructure management (DCIM)
• Data center design architectures

The discussion was so lively and valuable that we decided to capture the essence of it and share it with others in a new report, “Opportunities and threats for colocation providers around the globe.”

You can now download the report and learn how your peers at other colocation companies around the globe are dealing with these trends that promise to shape the face of the colo industry for years to come.

It’s a pretty quick read, just nine pages, but packed with information. You’ll learn how colo providers now have a slew of potential decision-makers to deal with and the steps they can take to ensure each gets the information they need. The report also discusses how to make best use of mergers, acquisitions and partnerships to advance your business goals.

Roundtable participants also talked about the opportunities they see on the horizon in areas including big data and the Internet of Things (IOT), and how they are well-positioned to help customers take advantage of them. The IOT also plays into the opportunity providers see in edge computing, a great solution for companies that need lots of aggregation points for their IOT networks.

Participants made clear that cloud computing is also a natural fit for IOT environments, given the cloud’s ability to enable customers to expand and contract capacity as necessary. They also see lots of other opportunity in cloud, whether it’s providing infrastructure for so-called Internet Giants like Amazon Web Services or offering cloud services themselves.

We heard a good bit of discussion around how providers manage their own data centers. It touched on topics including the use of data center infrastructure management (DCIM) tools to manage their data centers more effectively and efficiently, as well as the sorts of data center architectures that will deliver the kind of agility and flexibility providers need going forward.

Hearing from your peers is invaluable in virtually any industry. We are happy to be able to package up what we heard around that table back in November into this free report, “Opportunities and threats for colocation providers around the globe.” Check it out and then feel free to let us know your take in the comments below.