Data centers on the brink of extinction, Sun CIO says
Will corporate data centers be obsolete in the next ten years?
That’s what Sun Microsystems CIO Bob Worrall told an earth2tech reporter at Sun’s Eco Innovation event.
The reporter asked, “What does the data center of 2015 look like?”
Worralls response; “In 2015, the question isn’t what a corporate data center looks like, it’s, “Why do you need a data center?’” The data center of the future is nothing but a big black box of service providers. Even corporate enterprises like Sun, who have a traditional IT environment, won’t need that in 2015. As applications become more service-based, the need for our corporate data centers begins to diminish. The notion that every company has to have their own data center — that’s my father’s legacy. That’s not for 2015.”
Interesting thought, but it seems a bit overzealous; 2015 is only eight years away, after all.
I’ve seen reports about the IT professional talent pool drying up by then, and I’ve seen - and written - plenty on the looming power crisis data centers face, but the extinction of corporate data centers is a drastic prediction, don’t you think?
Posted: August 28th, 2007 under Data center physical infrastructure, Data Center Power, Data center room design and site selection, Green data center.
It sounds like Bob is desperate that Sun’s mantra : “The network is the computer” should come true.
Sorry: data centers have been around since the 1970s, and will likely be around for another 30 years. In the last 24 years, I’ve been thru a couple of data centers, and let me tell you: it’s only the hardware that changes, the rest just about stays the same, with the same centralised control and access requirements for the servers and LAN connection points. We’ve gone from ISO point-to-point to IP over fiber, from big mainframes to multi-core, multi-blade cabinets, but the heat and power needs stay the same as well.
Comment by jakes louw — August 30, 2007 @ 10:52 am
Obsolete data centers by 2015? Not likely. Some may dissappear and many may shrink in size, but not obsolete by a long shot. Companies like my employer will need a secure onsite storage facility to maintain critical application data bases that are shared by employees internally. Just look at the security issues with personal information finding its way into hyperspace now. 30 years ago when I was programming on a system III, the system/38 was introduced and their were predictions that programmer would soon be obsolete…users would be able to program for themselves. Never happened, technology just became more sophisticated and more complicated.
I’m more concerned with stock market predictions…ouch.
Comment by David — August 30, 2007 @ 11:02 am
Someone needs to provide details on how enterprise processing would work without a data center.
Would there be a central datastore?
How would data integrity be handled?
Data Security/Privacy? Performance?
If maintenance, upgrade, etc isn’t centralized, how would it be handled?
An ebay has no need for any centralized anything. Will the nature and organization of society change to be decentralized?
Will centralized government become like ebay?
Will the Fortune 500 (and even the 2,000) become like ebay?
Comment by Bob Schmidt — August 30, 2007 @ 11:03 am
Companies will always want to keep their sensitive and business critical information to themselves. SAN will stay.
Other companies business is to deliver services, they will continue to have a DC.
Software development will continue, this needs to be tested on many physical or virtual platforms, they will need some DC.
The list goes on and on.
Comment by Keimpe de Jong — August 30, 2007 @ 11:17 am
I don’t thing the first 4 commenters are thinking outside the box.
Just as I don’t care where the Techtarget servers are, or what OS they run, my remote offices don’t care about the data center running their ERP either.
It can be hosted by RackSpace and accessed over https. No more point-to-point, just go into the cloud.
The developers can build their code on DEV machines (at Rackspace) and move their code into production, just like today, without seeing the box it runs on.
There WILL be data centers, but they will be mega-centers. You won’t know or care what the hardware is, or the OS, as long as your SLA is met. The servers will be sliced and diced into millions of VMs and rented out.
Micro$oft is trying to make the Office-pay-as-you-go-from-the-web model work, as is Google Office. Again, you don’t care where the server is. And any workstation (or PDA, or TV, or auto dashboard, or ̷
will let me logon to my docs, tunes, videos, calendar, work all housed at the mega-center.
They’ll sell it as a convience to the individual, and as a way for the MBAs to replace capital expenditures on infrastructure with a flat expense, and to ‘focus on their core business’.
Comment by KevinS — August 30, 2007 @ 1:26 pm
While on to a trend shift, a 2015 timeline for the death of data centers is in tune with the death of the mainframe, lunar cities, flying cars and affordable Fusion.
SAAS everywhere needs dramatic increases in network security, reliability and access before my Data Center dissappears. Oh - and we need to have mastered SOA to get the required ROI. While DC ownership and size will decline - even as density increases, physical infrastructure remains until we get something better than radio.
Before then, conventional networks need changes I see as 30% technical and 70% political - new onvergence SW and content standards, international cooperation to safeguard networks and deliver true shared security above national agendas - just to name a few items which will push out resolution and timely implementation.
Over the next 8 years affordable fusion and space elevators radically chance the value points for the Data Center.
Comment by Bob Whitcombe — August 30, 2007 @ 5:16 pm
[…] Data centers on the brink of extinction, Sun CIO says — Server Specs My prediction: these predictions are the dumbest things ever. Data centers will not become extinct, though we may see some consolidation of them to service providers/ISPs/colos, etc. […]
Pingback by links for 2007-09-01 : Bob Plankers, The Lone Sysadmin — September 1, 2007 @ 1:17 am
I ‘think’ all he is saying is that the need for “corporate” data centers will go away. He thinks that utility computing will evolve so much that even large corporations won’t feel the need to have their own data center. They’ll just buy compute power and storage through a grid/utility provider instead. I do think that eight years is pretty darn ambitious for what he is dreaming of. Notice his quote of “…a big black box of service providers..” hmmm…what was the name of that Sun project a while back?
my two cents…
Comment by John Rath — September 1, 2007 @ 10:13 pm
[…] Not too long ago I wrote a blog about Sun’s CIO saying the days corporate owned and operated data centers will be a thing of the past by 2015. […]
Pingback by Amazon EC2 users lose data due to “growing pains” — Server Specs — October 3, 2007 @ 2:49 pm