Intelligent predictions: OnPATH shares top five IT industry trends for 2009
By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 12/1/2008 10:04:00 AM
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Green IT trends have been percolating, but 2009 will be the year they break through at the physical level, according to predictions released by OnPATH Technologies, a provider of intelligent infrastructure switch solutions that enable companies to automate, monitor, and virtualize the physical infrastructure layer.
OnPATH forecasts asset utilization, the adoption of 8Gbps speed as a new standard, Web as desktop, and physical layer automation to be among the top strategic technology trends in the coming year.
Many data centers continue to operate inefficiently with aging equipment, despite the rising costs of downtime and disaster recovery and business continuance testing. Virtualizing the physical layer can alleviate all of these issues and help companies achieve significant green IT milestones—including sustainability of legacy equipment in transition.
Here’s a complete look at OnPATH’s predictions:
Green IT: Enterprises continue to do more with smaller budgets, including staying within mandated power and cooling consumption requirements and finding solutions that use five to 10 times less power. Despite the reprieve from the power premiums of early 2008, pressure on power and cooling requirements at the network layer will drive IT managers to consider the inherent benefits of the physical layer.
Asset utilization: Limited budgets will require more results from existing servers, storage, switches and network infrastructure. Reliability will come strongly into play, and monitoring at the physical layer will become essential.
8Gbps as standard: 8Gbps Fibre Channel allows data centers to optimize resource usage and enable more traffic with fewer cables, which improves IT efficiency, service delivery, power and cooling.
Web as desktop: Web-centric service delivery models should continue proliferating as convenience, mobility, availability, and interoperability become the norm. The need to drive data faster and further distances will put the spotlight on the physical layer's ability to meet the challenge as virtualized and converged (FCoE) networks are utilized to enhance performance for speed and distance.
Physical layer automation: The physical layer has been ignored as not '”game-changing.” IT managers will discover that the physical layer and the capabilities that automation brings will pave the way for the next generation of fully-functional, lights-out data centers.
"We believe more businesses will reexamine their data center physical layer hardware in the next 12 months, given the substantial cost, flexibility, and performance benefits offered by a virtualized infrastructure," says Brian McCann, an OnPATH company officer. "The green movement is here to stay, and OnPATH is blazing the trail with innovative products that help data centers and test labs slash energy budgets while boosting reliability and efficiency."
