Data center automation represents one of the best ways to handle increasingly complex processes and improve IT efficiency, facilitate resource management, and ensure compliance. 

It’s exactly not a new strategy, but modern platforms and affordable pricing models are making automation more feasible than ever.

Gartner predicts that worldwide end-user spending on public clouds will grow 23.1% in 2021 to a total of $332.3 billion, a clear sign of confidence in cloud services from an industry still recovering from pandemic-related economic pressures.

But what is data center automation and why would companies consider it as a strategy for business optimization?

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Understanding Data Center Automation

Data center automation involves leveraging technologies to manage and execute data center processes without the need for human input:

• Scheduling
• Hosting
• Monitoring
• Application delivery
• Maintenance

Automating key processes like these reduces the time needed to perform rote tasks and builds consistency, repeatability, and efficiency into a center’s workflows. 

These services are being increasingly considered essential to a data center’s digital transformation, particularly as multi-cloud environments and hardware-as-a-service (HaaS) solutions become more practical.

Automation infrastructure in your data center is usually delivered through integrated software solutions that offer centralized access to data center resources across servers, storage, networks, and more. 

It’s becoming common to see these solutions presented as multi-cloud deployments, usually built on hybrid cloud platforms and connected through application programming interfaces (APIs – interfaces that define interactions between multiple software applications).

Service providers are offering data center automation services that make these solutions easy to access. For example, a company seeking better data center efficiency may be considering a cloud migration project to a public cloud service like Amazon Web Services (AWS). 

Instead, this company could work with a service provider who offers HaaS automation solutions, functionally allowing that company to rent computing capacity from the provider. This provider then bills the company for their cloud resources usage across workloads and cycles.

By doing so, the client company gains access to powerful tools and computing capabilities, often including cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning systems that augment resources management. 

This shift in workflow management and resource access results in substantial positive impact for the company’s efficiency, risk management, and overall workflow orchestration.

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What are the Benefits of Data Center Automation?

Automation represents a modern way to streamline operations and reduce long-term computing costs while simultaneously decreasing organizational risk.

It’s no secret that manual monitoring and troubleshooting in data centers is slow and time-consuming. 

Remediation steps are similarly slow, often detracting from a company’s problem resolution agility. Processes require substantial time and energy to manage and fix – and even when things are working well, there are substantial workflows that need to be managed by hand.

Similarly, IT computing costs can easily grow out of hand when data centers are poorly designed. 

There are usually big up-front hardware costs to consider and ongoing operational costs that are unpredictable. For cash-strapped companies, this IT cost variability is another source of risk – and one that can be nearly eliminated with a better system of data center management.

By working with a top-tier service provider for data center network automation, companies gain a new way to orchestrate key processes across the enterprise. Having access to hybrid platforms backed by machine learning makes it easier to coordinate tasks across tools, teams, and environments. 

Broadly, data center automation and orchestration platforms can provide the following benefits:

• Better productivity through AI-driven, hands-off workflow management
• Stronger security through smart patching and ongoing system monitoring
• Streamlined compliance through built-in industry compliance benchmarks, monitoring, and remediation tools
• Reduced costs through more predictable, consumption-based payment models

Managing Compliance, Risk, and Costs

Data center security automation services function much like traditional cloud services, but business owners don’t own anything – it’s all managed by the provider. 

Virtualization for data center automation provides clear benefits to pricing flexibility and costs from a reduced need for up-front capital investment, but it also gives companies a straightforward way to manage compliance. 

This holds true even when the company is expected to keep highly protected data on-premise. With the help of data center automation vendors, companies can get the best of both worlds without managing virtualized data centers.  

The service provider can hold protected data on-site, ensuring it’s accounted for in a secure physical location without any need for the client business to maintain its own storage. 

Functionally, this means that data center operators can manage compliance standards more easily and without any need to invest in expensive storage in a physical server.  

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Quadbridge Enables Data Center Efficiency

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Gartner estimated that worldwide data infrastructure spending would grow by 6% in 2021, despite the economic pressures brought on by the pandemic. 

This indicates that, for many companies, data infrastructure spending is a top line priority that can’t be put off, even in the face of extenuating circumstances.

When you consider all the benefits of data center automation, it’s easy to understand why so many companies are getting in on the action. If you’re considering a data center optimization project for your own company, contact us at Quadbridge. 

Whether you’re looking for physical or virtual data center arrays, we have you covered. Benefit from our expertise with:

• Virtualized servers
• Virtualized storage
• Virtualized environments
• Virtual networks
• And more

We have years of experience helping companies manage their IT across hardware procurement, cloud optimization, and workforce orchestration. 

We bring that expertise to your project and ensure that any IT solution you have produces positive results for your business. Connect with us today to learn more.