Our ancestors used to travel for months together and migrate across countries for trading and strengthen the relationships between their countries
Now, we need seconds to get connected, no scratch that, we are always connected thanks to the data and technology. Over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every single day, and it’s only going rapidly. It is estimated that 1.7 MB of data will be created every second for every person on earth. As we all know that these quintillion bytes of data are stored in the data centers. Yes, those boring, bland building each the size of a football field stores out data. Every image uploaded on Instagram, every tweet, a mail you sent constitutes data. Many consumer technology gainst like Netflix, Youtube, Amazon, use data centers to house in their mission-critical data.
The Rise of Data Centers
The data centers have always been at the forefront of innovation and have been helping businesses (no matter the niche or the size). A business can collect, store, access, and manage your data from any remote place on the globe through a data center. And not just for storing your
data, they also provide backup, disaster recovery, data management, and networking options. Data centers provide limitless possibilities to businesses when it comes to communicating, processing, and storing their data. The large servers inside the sophisticated data centers provide uninterrupted connectivity and zero geographical constraints.
With the exponential increase in the traffic from the IoT and big data, the demand for data centers is expected to increase. Experts predict that the demand for data centers will increase two-fold by 2021 and the data traffic will be increasing by a staggering 50%.
Imagine the zillion bytes of data that is going to be stored, and shared in the data centers. Unbelievable, right!
Let us see how big of a role data centers are playing in the global economies.
The Omnipresence of Data Centers in the World Economy
Digitization plays a huge role when it comes to boosting the economy, the digital economy to be more specific. The digital economy keeps growing more by the day with no end in sight and with this the demand for computing technologies and data processing also grows.
This means that data puts huge pressure on the IT infrastructure and therefore the demand for data centers, through which the businesses are carrying and processing huge workloads of data, also increases.
For every small thing we do in our everyday lives, at least one data center is involved. If you lounge on your couch and read a book on kindle, you need a data center, if you book a train ticket or simply order take out, your details are stored in the data center. No matter where you are, what you do, data centers are imbibed deep in our lives and thereby play a significant role in our economies.
Data Centres drive growth, generate employment, and will boost the digital economy. The data center represents the growth in economic value. According to a research firm RTI International, For 1 data center worker, 5 more jobs are being supported elsewhere in the economy.
Employment with Data Centers
Data centers are the heart of a digital ecosystem. It generates many job opportunities for skilled technical workers and engineers. Data centers provide two types of employment: Direct Employment includes the construction phase that is building the data center. Then comes managing the data center which requires skilled workers. Finally, people are also employed for managing the IT infrastructure housed in the data centers.
Indirect Employment usually is related to the supply chain employment and is not directly linked to the data centers. Indirect employment includes location finders, lawyers, contractors, real estate companies to find a suitable location for data centers, PR & media consultants, finance consultants, accounting officers, etc.
Technology giant, Google’s data centers, generated $ 1.3 billion in economic activity, provided 11k jobs throughout the United States, and generated $750 million in labor income. The increase in penetration of digital payments, deployment of big data has pushed many companies for data localization and thereby backing business opportunities for the local communities, increasing revenue, and economic growth of a nation.
Also, apart from the IT businesses many sectors such as education, finance, media, e-commerce, logistics, etc, are putting in efforts to move towards digitization, helping the governments by being the driving force behind economic growths.
When it comes to developing countries like India, Indonesia, and many other countries and the established businesses in them are moving rapidly towards digitization and establishing data centers to promote economic growth. Local data centers in India like CtrlS, Tata Communication, NetMagic, etc., have contributed majorly to the economic growth in the country. The data center market in India is expected to grow by over 4% at a CAGR between the years 2019-2025.
As the businesses and people using devices keep growing, so does the need for creating and wanting to store more data. This will create an even greater need for the growth of data centers and with it comes many opportunities and possibilities. Many businesses will increase their investments in infrastructure and so the cycle begins again without any end in sight.
About the Author
Sunny Kumar is a technology enthusiast who writes for CtrlS. CtrlS.in is India’s only and Asia’s Largest Tier 4 Datacenter & IT managed services provider. We offer cloud hosting, colocation, network services for businesses
Featured image: ©Jijomathai
