2025 Predictions: What’s Ahead In Infrastructure And Operations – Part 2
Posted January 3, 2025 by Sayers
Insights into what’s coming in compute, storage, and business resiliency round out the 2025 predictions for infrastructure and operations by a panel of Sayers expert engineers and architects.
Read on for part two of this series designed to help your infrastructure, networking, and disaster recovery teams prepare for what’s ahead. (Here’s part one if you missed it.)
6. Compute Power And Cooling Requirements Will Drive An Increase In Rack-Mount Servers with Liquid Cooling options.
GPU’s needed for intense Generative AI workloads and high-end CPUs require more power and cooling to handle today’s compute-intensive workloads. That energy-guzzling trend will continue with the massive amounts of data needed to train AI models.
Due to the power and cooling requirements of modern processors, some organizations are moving their infrastructure to rack-mount servers with liquid cooling options for their energy and cooling efficiencies.
Wade Scheffner, Solutions Architect at Sayers, says:
“Even for organizations without GPUs, conversations about power and cooling will continue to increase. Which processors are available to certain customers and certain use cases because of the power and cooling requirements will come into play more and more.”
7. Compute Express Link (CXL) Will Impact Memory Expansion And Server Refreshes.
Beyond power and cooling, memory is one of the largest costs of any server. The CXL industry standard allows memory sharing and pooling, enabling different types of processors to work in parallel to process massive amounts of data.
Steve Johnson, Senior Solutions Architect at Sayers, says:
“With CXL, you’re able to have multiple compute servers connected to the memory pooling expansion chassis, each using memory as needed and sharing it between them. When it’s time to refresh your servers, you don’t have to refresh to a larger server with more memory. Instead, you can tie back into the memory pool chassis, eliminating a lot of costs involved in refreshes.”
8. More Companies Will Turn To Mid-Range Storage Refreshes.
According to Cybersecurity Ventures 2024 Data Attack Surface Report, the world will store more than 200 zettabytes of data by 2025. Half of that data will be stored in the cloud.
Solutions for primary storage, which provides processors with speedier access to data and programs currently in use, will become more focused on mid-range storage products (examples include Dell PowerStore, HPE Alletra, and Pure Storage FlashArray).
Vendors who offer a single-pane-of-glass experience to manage all of their storage infrastructure will especially appeal to enterprises. Johnson says:
“One of the big pain points of larger vendors is having all these different products with different systems needed to manage them. Having that single-pane-of-glass management will be crucial going forward, especially as companies grow their storage platform.”
9. Demand For Cyberstorage Will Grow To Protect Primary Data From Attacks.
2025 will see growing interest in data storage options that combine backup capabilities with active cybersecurity defense. More companies want to protect their primary data from storage anomalies, ransomware, and other cybersecurity attacks even before the data gets to backup.
According to Gartner:
By 2029, 100% of storage products will include cyberstorage capabilities focused on active defense beyond recovery from cyber events, up from 20% in early 2024.
10. Global Trends Will Continue To Drive The Need For Business Resiliency.
Cybersecurity events such as ransomware attacks aren’t the only reasons companies need strong business resiliency plans in place. Severe weather events, water shortages, and political changes worldwide will increase the urgency to strengthen business resiliency through business continuity management (BCM).
Manufacturing businesses in particular are dependent on a reliable water supply. Disaster recovery capabilities from weather-related events will become even more essential for companies seeking affordable insurance. Organizations across every industry must be ready for new or altered regulations that come from changes in political administrations.
With that backdrop, Chief Information Security Officers will continue to take increasing responsibility for BCM programs. Kevin Finch, Senior Business Continuity Architect at Sayers, says:
“We will continue to see the CISOs have an interest in a robust BCM program, because you need to be able to respond to any sort of ransomware or other incident that compromises your data.”
11. Data Protection Will Shift Toward As-A-Service Models.
Data protection uses methods such as data backups to keep data available, uncorrupted, compliant with privacy laws, and easily restorable after a disruptive event such as a ransomware attack or natural disaster.
Companies looking to upgrade their current data protection platform or consolidate multiple platforms are seeing the benefits of Backup as a Service (BaaS). BaaS solutions can be an easy and inexpensive way to have an offsite copy of your data available, so you can quickly recover lost or stolen data.
The adoption of Microsoft Office 365 has contributed to this growing trend to offload the hosting and management of backup and restore applications to the as-a-service provider.
Scheffner says:
“If you have Office 365 you should be backing that up with something more advanced than just the Microsoft-provided backup. Since most Office 365 backup options are as-a-service, this leads many to consider doing all of their backups as-a-service.”
Questions? Contact us at Sayers today to discover extensive technology solutions, services, and expertise to cover all areas of your business.
