A lot of articles are citing AI and automation as one of the trends that will determine the future of data centres. For which specific part data centre operations do you believe AI will be the most beneficial?

Artificial intelligence and automation are increasingly influencing data centre operational practices as the adoption of cloud computing paradigm and the exponential rise of data make data centres more complex to manage.

What I think will benefit the most from AI is data centre monitoring and particularly anomaly detection because its reliability is very important today to avoid disruption of business operations.

What are the main challenges in automating all data centres?

The type of automation that is being integrated and that will be increasingly present in data centres differs from the traditional one in that we no longer have to deal with deterministic software based on fixed rules, but with software that learns from past data and makes decisions in probabilistic manner. Data represents a strategic asset, so it is necessary to have data governance procedures which are essential to understand how to extract more value from what is collected. Another key point concerns the implementation itself, as this new automation can offer significant benefits to companies only if implemented in parallel with employee upskilling.

How readily available is a technology like AI for smaller data centre companies?

The time to adopt AI algorithms is now, even for smaller companies, to continue to be competitive. It is true that the costs for the development of internal artificial intelligence solutions are high and that the hyperscalers who have been using them for some time in their data centre operations are the ones who develop them, but many vendors have started to incorporate these algorithms into their products. Unfortunately, sometimes these are not very customizable solutions and only suitable for specific products, but there are also online models that can be adapted to your needs.

What does the future look like with fully automated data centres?

Data centre automation processes will go hand in hand with the implementation of SDN and cloud computing principles which will be increasingly pervasive. This will allow many more data centres to be installed in the immediate vicinity of the end user and consequently to benefit from the myriad of applications that take advantage of low latencies, many of which we do not know today and which will be enabled by a flexible network with a vertical design.