The presentation from Richard Scannell – Senior Vice President of Glasshouse Technologies at IP Expo 2009 was one of the best attended and subsequently most viewed presentations covering data centers at the event. You can view this ondemand here Richards comments still resonate and hold true one year on.

The evolution of the data centre can be simplified into a small number of major computing shifts – the invention of the mainframe and therefore the data centre, the client server revolution, the adoption of the internet and most recently, Virtual insanity…

So, as we ponder the next technological shift and its impact on the data centre, we are also forced to consider not just what the data centre will become, but also, how many of us will even own one or anything that resides in one. As virtualisation changes everything from tiering models, to DR strategies, Cloud computing, it would appear, it is about to hit the big time. Along with it, comes a potential that the infrastructure market will consolidate into a much smaller number of much larger players and therefore we may be on the precipice of rapid shifts in way technology is purchased, deployed and managed throughout all our businesses.