Automation: Data Centres Are The Low Hanging Fruit

I was told my tour was being managed from the NOC. But there would be no NOC tour because it was at Luxembourg a good three hundred and forty kilometers away. One central NOC, managing all of their data center spread across Western Europe, Africa, and Latin America.

Now to Asia where HGC is rapidly creating a connected data center cluster. The only way to stabilize so many mergers, acquisitions and builds is through similar automation and central command for operations and engineering. And as our friends in Europe show us, no more than a couple of facilities managers at each site.

The main challenge to automation is the mindset. I once had a head of IT advise against project management software and to use Excel and PowerPoint instead, because, “everything anyway needs to be converted to Excel.” Such a mindset amongst otherwise sophisticated colleagues and customers leads to interesting situations. In many cases, automated data centers employ on-site people in uniform to provide a sense of security to customers whose business is protected by a Central NOC somewhere else. In a few years, airlines may well employ pilots for the same reason.

Like power, connectivity is critical to any data center. Automated, Software Defined Networks (SDNs) like HGC’s, transform a centralized NOC into the focal point for connectivity. Whether a rack, power, or Internet-related issue, one can monitor and act. A data center resting on one’s fiber does very well as our own experience demonstrates. On-net is the magic word that reduces operating expenses, allowing that much more revenue to rain down on earnings. So does automation. No harm belabouring that point. As long as the associated capital investment doesn’t mess with your rate of return, automation invariably fattens the bottom line by reducing operating costs.

The question then arises, how do all this augur for the security people being replaced and the NOC employees not needed? Not well. This is the conundrum of our times, with machines now checking us out from supermarkets and checking us in to airplanes. I don’t have an answer other than to make sure our kids go STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) at school.