Thinking About Cloud vs On-Prem vs Colocation Has Gotten Smarter

A few years ago and still now few companies whose core business isn’t running data centers want to run data centers. But for numerous reasons, including the high cost of cloud services, compliance requirements, and performance needs, there’s a tendency that many companies aren’t ready to hand the entirety of their technical infrastructure operations over to AWS or Azure.

The overall trend is toward a mix of cloud and colocation services. As far as on-premises data centers go, most enterprises appear to be all set for the foreseeable future.

AFCOM surveyed the top represented industries included healthcare and pharma, education, IT services, finance, and construction and engineering on whether companies were “repatriating” workloads they had moved to the cloud. For the second year in a row, close to 60 percent said they had moved some workloads from the cloud back to on-prem or colocation data centers. Is this a sign that the cloud services market is shrinking? Not at all. This is a sign of more sophisticated thinking about various digital infrastructure options. Companies are increasingly using cloud services for workloads that benefit uniquely from running on cloud platforms.

There are two main findings according to the new tendency: widespread adoption of DCIM software and rising rack densities. The average density this year is 7kW per rack and it’s reported to have increased over the last three years. Close to 70 percent are currently using DCIM solutions for security purposes, 65 percent for environmental management, and about 60 percent for facility, power, asset tracking, and cable management. Integration of DCIM software with newer technologies such as intelligent systems and AR/VR is also on the rise.

While on-prem data center footprint isn’t growing, there’s a focus on getting more out of organizations’ existing computing facilities.