Workers find attraction in data centres

by Lia Timson

Thursday, 01 May 2008

Page 2 of 2

“Data centres are cutting-edge technology now and that’s exciting for the staff."

“There are a lot of shared systems, call centre infrastructure, recovery, data replication plus hardware and software support in a disaster recovery environment. We have different types of infrastructures, so in a data centre you don’t just get to work in the IT department of a hospital or other industry, you get to work across several (clients) in different industries and different platforms.

"I spoke to some of our people and they told me they find the whole data centre space really exciting. They are really pumped to be there," he says.

According to IT research company Gartner, data centre managers should now be refreshing their skills to prepare for future demand in the sector.

They should ensure they can balance the soft skills of communications, marketing and people management with strong technical knowledge to run the next generation of large data centres, says Gartner analyst Rakesh Kumar.

In addition they must be prepared to manage change in a complex and often international environment, be sensitive to different cultures and working practices to deal with multicultural teams and develop strong financial skills to deal with energy consumption and other demands.

“During the next few years, there will be a strong surge in new technologies in data centres. Virtualisation and workload management software, energy management tools and new storage networks will all require careful analysis from managers,” Kumar says in his report.