The unsung heroes of the past year’s unprecedented times were the myriad of data centers worldwide. We didn’t hear about them in the news, and we didn’t post lawn signs about them, but when most of the world was mandated to stay home and work, they required and expected their networks to function seamlessly. And for the most part, they did.
During the lockdowns of the pandemic, we learned how valuable our data centers were. With the monumental increase in demand, many centers added capacity as quickly as they could to keep up. Operating under the same health restrictions as other businesses, the data center teams worked tirelessly to prevent downtime and to keep platforms functioning.
Retailers have been leaning on the world wide web to market and sell products, but organizations that traditionally did not have a large presence online hustled to create one last year. Restaurants offered online ordering with pandemic safe, curbside pick-up. Small, local businesses that had operated mostly in-person, creatively came up with ways to use the web to keep their businesses afloat. Schools conducted their entire curriculums online. Office buildings were empty, workers linking up to their organization via the cloud and conducting billions of meetings digitally.
The speed that a majority of the population converted to remote work did not offer time for data center stakeholders to leisurely plan upgrades and capacity increases. Data center employees had to begin working under “social distancing” mandates, reorganizing schedules for reduced occupation, and deferring non-critical activities. Systems were upgraded as quickly as possible with limited teams.
As restrictions are easing up and employees are getting back to their pre-pandemic workload and schedules, data center managers will need to find time to reflect on the performance of their systems and technologies during this fast-paced, demanding period. Managers should take the time to review lessons learned on what worked and what didn’t. Partnering with a firm with expertise in data center best practices like Albireo Energy to develop a strategy to move forward and improve performance in the most efficient way possible can give a firm the advantage of profiting from the lessons of the past year.
Albireo can evaluate the systems and infrastructure with recommendations based on experience for energy efficiency, control strategy, data collection and system settings. If capacity was expanded and infrastructure added to a facility with no time for careful evaluation of the ROI and usage efficiency, Albireo can offer suggestions to ensure optimum integration, connectivity and efficiency. Albireo can ensure systems are optimized with data analysis and retro-commissioning.
Let’s add the hard-working data center employees to the list of heroes that we show appreciation for. Albireo salutes these organizations and thanks them for their contribution to all of us who worked from home, shopped from home or required bandwidth to visit digitally with our loved ones, conduct meetings and attend functions. Thank you, data center heroes.
