Incorporating research data from more than 1,200 IT professionals from 53 countries, the new book is part history lesson and part how-to guide for delivering new IT services. It traces the evolution of the enterprise data centres from legacy islands of data, through virtualisation and cloud, to the rise of software-defined data centres.
“A decade ago, IT administrators prided themselves on their silos,” said Lowe, partner and cofounder of ActualTech Media. “But that organisational mentality has come and gone, and the IT department of the future is becoming much more tightly integrated and highly generalised. With increasing demands on IT and with dwindling budgets, the IT teams that can adapt quickly and establish themselves as people who can pivot to the needs of the business will be in the highest demand. This new publication will bring IT professionals quickly up to speed on creating business value from the intersection of flash storage, hyperconvergence and cloud infrastructures.”
Readers will learn why hyperconvergence, software-defined data centre and cloud-based IT services will play an increasingly important role in the datacentre of the future. Building a Modern Data Center will be an important tool for CIOs, architects and IT administrator with coverage of many practical topics, including key outcomes expected from IT, data protection needs, the ins and outs implementing software-defined storage and hyperconverged infrastructure, and the design of the data centre of tomorrow. The book concludes with insights and predictions about how the latest trends in containers, hybrid cloud, open-source projects, non-volatile memory and the improving economics of flash will impact data centres over the coming years.
“Tech pros can no longer keep doing the same old thing and expect to thrive or even survive,” said Stu Miniman, senior analyst and principal research contributor at Wikibon.com. “Building a Modern Data Center gives users detailed information that will assist in evaluating today’s business challenges and enable the delivery of data-laced insights that actually help IT departments deliver more value to their organisations.”
The 260-page Building a Modern Data Center is available in PDF for free from the Atlantis website and in Kindle eBook format ($2.99) from Amazon.com. Print copies ($9.99) will be available from Amazon next month. 
