Before explaining Data Centres (DC) usefulness, we need to define what is DC as different people might have different interpretations. Some people define DC as the facilities like power & cooling, raised floor, caging, gen-set etc. only (the shell). Whereas some people define DC as a broader term i.e. an environment encompasses DC facilities as well as all the hardware & software contents the DC is hosting e.g. server, storage, network, security devices, applications, middleware & databases etc.
Usefulness of DC includes:
DC contains all the critical applications & databases that power & support our communications, processing, E-commerce transactions, storage / backup & archive of those transaction data etc. - this is especially more important during Internet & IoT era whereby many things are connected, analyzed & the right decisions need to be made. Some IT department built multiple DCs for DR or to avoid single point of failure. Whether organizations are in different vertical industries like: Banks, Insurance, Telco, Cloud Service Providers like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud etc., Manufacturing, Government agencies etc., their IT departments are in-charged to build such secured & resilient DC.
DC whether built by end customers themselves (normally by their IT department), hosted by DC service providers, provided by cloud service providers etc. are the heart to facilitate all the new ICT technologies e.g. social networking, mobile connectivity (e.g. NFV, SDN etc.), Artificial Intelligence / Big Data Analytics, Cloud Computing etc.
DC is also the foundations for all the sharing economy / idea economy whereby ideas can transform the way we live / do business e.g. like Uber, Grab, Airbnb etc.
Nowadays Data Centers (DC) are a core part of any organization or individual.
For the organization either physically or in the cloud DC contains any data of the bussines such as mails, invoices, customer details and son on.
Moreover DC impact any aspect of our lives containing the IT systems which allow cell phones to communicate, systems that help internet to work, credit card payments, etc.