Increased Connectivity Demands in Canada
Datacenters are the backbone of Canadian digital infrastructure. The pandemic accelerated the transformation of digital business, which presented unique challenges for both datacenter providers and consumers. The increased demands on connectivity forced providers to find a way to facilitate increased internet traffic while maintaining adequate cyber security. Some of the challenges that have plagued datacenters for decades have become even more pertinent. Relentless growth in data generation, processing, storage, and transmission will require continuous improvements in datacenters’ efficiency and capacity. Yet as Canada is emerging from the pandemic, the challenges related to the datacenter infrastructure remain.
Most Common Issues Affecting Canadian Datacenters
Source: IDC's Canadian Datacenter Infrastructure Ecosystem Pulse
IDC's recent Canadian Datacenter Infrastructure Ecosystem Pulse report asked Canadian enterprises to identify the most common issues affecting datacenter infrastructure. Downtime due to networking failure topped the chart, followed by downtime due to human error and exceeded UPS (uninterruptible power supply) capacity or UPS failure. These challenges are not new - a similar study conducted by IDC in 2021 revealed that these failures were also top of mind at the time. Large companies are struggling with downtime due to human errors and equipment failure more frequently compared to small and medium counterparts. Ongoing supply chain pressures and the labor market shortage will hinder efforts to alleviate these issues soon.
Top 3 Datacenter Investment Priorities
This study also examines the issues Canadian organizations are planning to remedy first. When asked what areas of datacenter infrastructure require additional investments, respondents picked storage capacity first, followed by digital security and network capacity. Despite falling lower in the list of issues affecting datacenters, digital security remains a top investment priority – both because of the pervasiveness of data throughout Canadian organizations (datacenter to endpoint to cloud to edge) and the proliferation of new threats to our data during the last two years.
Source: IDC's Canadian Datacenter Infrastructure Ecosystem Pulse
Cyber security incidents present outsized risks to businesses. IDC has identified 20 ways in which a single data breach can cost your organization, from direct costs such as downtime, data loss, or a ransom paid, to indirect costs such as reputational harm and lost productivity. So, it should not be surprising that increasing digital security is one of the main priorities for Canadian organizations in the next 12 months.
Again, there were differences between the approaches taken by large, medium, and small organizations. Small and medium companies intend to prioritize investments in compute, storage, and network capacity. Large enterprises will focus on security first but will also invest in capacity. Investments in cloud computing have and will be continued to be made to address each of these concerns – while large businesses intend to increase cloud spending faster, most Canadian organizations are looking to cloud providers to help alleviate capacity issues, increase digital capabilities, and increase their digital security and resilience.
About the Authors
Henry Arzumanian is a research analyst in the Data and Analysis group at IDC Canada. Henry will lead the Network Infrastructure Tracker and the Security Appliance Tracker for IDC Canada. Henry will also support his clients through custom research and consulting projects.
As Research Vice President of IDC Canada's Infrastructure Solutions Research Group, Dave Pearson manages our team of datacenter analysts in the areas of compute, storage, networking, security, as well as contributing to edge, cloud, cognitive and infrastructure software research.
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