Data Centre Essentials

Foreword by Tom Glover

We live in exceptional times. The world’s technological evolution is springboarding civilisation beyond nature’s Darwinism limits. While the world deals with world issues, the world’s ultrarich are heading for the stars and the next frontier – wherever this is, rest assured there will be a data centre nearby.

Keeping up with all the noise around us and ongoing change is a full‐time job, which is why, if nothing else, we should all once in a while pause and remind ourselves that in order to manage the changes around us, we first need to understand the fundamental, underpinning enablers to those very changes.

The growth of the digital world has been rapid, and the change it has brought about is immense. Do you recall the first Sinclair ZX81 with 1K of RAM; the birth of email, modems, newsgroups, the internet, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and Salesforce all coming into being; and watching companies acquired, falling by the way, and morphing into different visions of themselves?

Every year we consume more digital experiences than the last, create more data, build more applications, and solve more problems through technology. When we lose our phone under the sofa, or our computer crashes, we feel lost, disconnected from humanity’s modern hive. In many ways, in the way Tim Marshall talks about ‘Prisoners of Geography,’ are we not also ‘Prisoners of Technology,’ albeit technology’s borders are global?

Throughout the journey of this digital evolution, ...