Could data centers be any "cooler"?

What’s the first word that pops in your head, when you hear data center?

Call me a geek, but I love learning about the latest and greatest innovations when it comes to the technology that makes everything we do on #OurWeb possible. Of course, I’m talking about data centers. They’re often invisible to the everyday consumer hidden behind brands like ebay, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, and (you-name-the-website) that make what we do on the web possible.

There’s more than we can even imagine to what goes into designing and running a data center. Think about the billions of people on the web accessing thousands upon thousands of petabytes of data in the form of news, photos, videos, blogs, anything and everything digital. We pound on data centers across the globe hard, never settling for anything but instantaneous access to the content we want, the content we need to fulfill our insatiable hunger for information, entertainment, and social connection.

At the same time, we demand privacy, security, and a level of service a thousand times more efficient than waiting in lines at the local grocery store, on hold for customer support, or sitting at home waiting for a technician to fix our cable television because the Mad Men premier is on this weekend (I’ve been there).

Add to that the demands we put on companies to operate more efficiently in terms of the energy they consume, or the carbon footprint they possess, and what we know just scratches the surface of what it takes to run a data center.

So, yes, I appreciate the innovation that goes into these massive server and storage build-outs. To put some of this innovation into perspective, check out how one company (IO) is innovating around the way data centers are designed and deployed. It’s a very cool animation that paints quite a picture and just might change the way you think about data centers.