The data centre of the future - part 3 (what will we do with it)
by
Charlie Bess
Now that we have this versatile and powerful data centre that organizations can tap into and pay for what they need, how will that change what runs within it?
This blog has described in a number of different ways the integration and flexibility aspects of Service Oriented Architectures, providing a much more business process focused set of services for the organization.
I’ve also tried to describe the new levels of simulation and model based business, providing the deeper understanding for the enterprise of its operations. The use of business intelligence, pattern recognition and business rules will drive latency out of the organization's response to information and events. With this understanding of the organization and its client's needs, companies can personalize their offerings to their clients based upon what they can “know” about what the client (not just the market) wants. We can probably all think of examples that would make our lives easier, like:
- our bank reminds us that when our child turns 5, planning for college should start
- our retailer would tell us when that china pattern in our wedding registry is being discontinued
- the corporate mail system knows how to alert me to the events based upon the context of the current
situation
It’s not like they don’t have a good chance of knowing these things. The information today is just locked up in isolation.
With the techniques described above, they should have the capability to take advantage of this knowledge. Whole new levels of up-sell/cross-sell and fraud detection will be possible. If tightly coupled into the operational model, this business by wire or “game of business” capability should allow the enterprise to responds effectively and consistently.
I’ve blogged about mass customization and how it has never really lived up to the hype, maybe that was because it never had the computing horsepower behind it to really personalize the experience. The data centres of the future will be able to address this.
The concept of exponential growth defined in Moore's law is well understood, but computational power is increasing in another dimension as well - there are also exponentially more computers chips created every year. The information gathered or synthesized by these will provide vast amounts of data for the data centre to turn into information.With the finer grained understanding of the purchase process using RFID techniques and other information at the edge, more information can be gathered and fed into these simulations, further improving the organizations costs and making them more competitive.
The data center of the future becomes more of an enterprise value network centre, pulling together its resources, adding value through its flexible and powerful capabilities. Its limits will be on our understanding of how to take advantage of it. Even if it may be "owned" by someone other than the enterprise that uses it.
There will be those who don't like the "big brother", information rich world that this will enable, but if done well, it should make life easier for most. How this gets addressed in the laws of across the world will be something to watch.
