The Growing Demand for Data Centre Capacity

The ongoing pandemic has drastically altered how businesses operate. The growing need for remote working has created unprecedented growth in the data sector, creating significant challenges that businesses have to overcome. 

This has caused higher levels of demand for data centres than ever before, as remote working technology is playing a key role in maintaining everyday business operations during lockdown. And this trend is here to stay – with data centre growth expected to continue past the lifting of lockdown and beyond.

For many businesses, now is the time to act and determine whether existing disaster recovery policies can keep up with the new challenges of a post-COVID business environment. Especially because the current climate is affecting data centre capacity.

So, how can people-first cloud technology help you manage your growing business needs?

The Effect of COVID-19 on Data Centre Capacity 

Since the advent of COVID-19, many public cloud providers have struggled to provide the necessary capacity to keep up with demand. Remote working, increased use of web-based applications, spikes in internet usage, and other factors, have contributed to much higher usage of services than ever before. 

Many larger cloud providers have been struggling to cope with these demands, despite adding extra capacity. Instead, they're focusing their efforts on large enterprise customers, leaving many SMEs with less than ideal capacity and services. 

This has led many SMEs to look for more personalised, stable, and agile technology solutions to cope with their growing business needs and changing consumer demands.

The Growth of Data Centres

Before COVID-19, the fast growth of cloud technology played a critical role in the success and demand of the data sector. The technology has seen unprecedented growth, with many companies shifting their entire workforce to a completely different way of operating. Data centre technology has been growing rapidly for over 50 years, but its application for hosting cloud services has since been utilised by many businesses, to give them more flexibility in how they work. 

Currently, the pandemic has caused remote working to become an essential part of day-to-day operations, so effective IT infrastructure and cloud support have become a necessity, rather than a luxury. This has pushed forward the fast adoption of data centre technology, as more businesses recognise the long-term benefits and critical boost it can have on communication and collaboration at their company. 

As lockdown restrictions end and employees return to work, there will undoubtedly be a continued growth trajectory of the industry. Businesses have demonstrated that remote working is possible and many will have to rethink their continuity and disaster recovery plans, using cloud and data centre technology to support them moving forward.

The Benefits of a Cloud Audit

For businesses that are looking to change the way they work and transition to the cloud, an audit of their existing infrastructure setup can be an effective way of discovering a solution that best fits their personal data demands. 

A cloud audit involves a discussion around current setup, data demands, and requirements. Every business is different, so an audit can help discover challenges specific to your business and future demands that may not be immediately clear on the surface.

Once this is understood, it becomes easier to recommend a cloud solution that's tailored to an organisation's requirements, so a seamless route from legacy systems to cloud adoption can be achieved, without major disruptions. 

We're Here to Help

Intercity owns and operates three state of the art data centres, including a brand new data centre in Birmingham. Our Birmingham data centre works together with our sites in London and Manchester to support existing customers while remaining open and accessible for future growth and expansion.

All of our data centres are designed to provide Tier 3 99.98% availability for all your cloud data and applications. Our network is geographically diverse, so there's never a single point of failure. So, you can be confident that you and your employees can connect and access cloud services from wherever your business is located. 

Start Your Cloud Journey

We offer a personalised experience that's tailored to your business. Collaboration and communication is critical, especially during recent upheavals. That's why we'll ensure your workforce can continue operating, no matter where they are. 

You no longer have to worry about the risk, responsibility, and ever-changing demands of your on-premise infrastructure. We can provide secure, scalable cloud infrastructure options to provide you with additional capacity to deploy your business-critical applications.

To see how your business can benefit from the cloud, book a free cloud audit with one of our experts to find out more.