As technology evolves and the digital revolution approaches, many businesses are wondering where the data center fits in their future infrastructure. Kicking off theCUBE’s, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, coverage of the IO Conversation – The Data Center as a Platform event, being held at the Rosewood Hotel in Menlo Park, CA, John Furrier (@furrier) and Peter Burris (@plburris) hoped to discover the answer to that question.

What is a data center?

Data centers have long been the hub for all things back-office IT, but their importance is growing. Most data centers are now “transducers that transform information,” said Burris. They are physical locations that handle and manage all data for a business.

With data becoming more valuable, enterprises must reconsider their data center design, deployment and management, according to Burris.

Location, location, location

Even with businesses pushing more data to the cloud and other digital spaces, data centers will still be a requisite. After all, “all that computing has to happen somewhere,” said Burris. With a physical location comes the necessity for plenty of power and a stable grid.

Businesses interested in data centers have to consider their “footprint, power and distance,” said Furrier. Though huge buildings full of servers may no longer be the way to go, a central data center is still important. Some businesses may not want to move all their sensitive information to a digital space, and others may simply want direct control of their storage constraints.

Now that data is at “the center of value propositions,” it’s more important than ever to have a physical processing location, according to Burris.

Data everywhere

Data is quickly becoming the center of the market, and businesses are rushing to capitalize. However, it seems “the market doesn’t know how to design around data,” said Furrier. Data doesn’t follow the laws of scarcity and runs behind almost all software today.

Digital business are finding ways to use data to “influence customers,” said Burris. In order to maximize the use of that data, businesses will have to find new ways to incorporate effectively run data centers.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of The IO Conversation – The Data Center as a Platform event.

Photo by SiliconANGLE