In our previous blog posts we’ve discussed numerous issues and opportunities faced by data centres from energy usage to downtime impact. In the next series of posts we’ll take a look at the fascinating history of how data centres have evolved over the past 50 years.
It started back in the late 1950s when IBM and American Airlines conceived of the idea to create an automated passenger reservation system (offered by Sabre). This early concept of a “data centre” was to commercialize a processing system that could manage airline seat reservations instantly and efficiently. This new process would make data available electronically to any reservation agent at any location. The system became reality in 1960 and forever changed the landscape by ushering in the era of enterprise-scale data centres.
Today’s cloud-centric data architecture is a huge technological leap from those initial mainframe deployments. One of the most obvious shifts we see in today’s data centre is the migration from a hardware and software ownership model, toward a subscription and capacity on demand model. In our next blog post we’ll look in some detail at how data centre technology evolved from these early Mainframes. And let’s not forget the ongoing importance of a proper data centre cleaning regimen.
In the meantime, we found this clever Infographic which peeks inside some of today’s most impressive data centres and highlights the incredible volume of internet and social media services that they support and we all rely on daily. To illustrate the investment required, did you know that Google spent $7.3 Billion on its Data Centres in 2013 alone?
Credit: The above infographic was sourced from Who Is Hosting This