We all know there are a number of emerging tech trends that can impact businesses, whether it's in terms of security, communication capabilities or even staff productivity. There's one area of IT that organisations need to understand, however – the data centre.

Data centre facilities are the critical backbone of modern IT infrastructure, responsible for storage of large amounts of data and increasingly hosting the applications a business uses on a daily basis. These facilities will continue to grow over the next few years, becoming even more important for successful IT – and business – operations.

So what do businesses need to know about data centres?

They'll soon be the home of IT

Not long ago, much of the IT infrastructure that a business would use was hosted on site. This meant that the servers and all of the necessary support equipment was bought or leased and maintained by the company itself. Obviously, it's a substantial cost to absorb – especially in companies with growing IT operations.

For many companies, IT is essential for many other departments – such as marketing as consumers begin to go digital.

With IT now a critical area of businesses, the cost of running data centres is likely to be too great for many. After all, how can a small business be expected to shell out a significant amount to run these systems?

Spending is increasing

Australian organisations will spend $2.5 billion on data centre systems this year, up from $2.3 billion last year, according to research from Gartner. This is no small sum, and certainly indicator of their importance to IT and the organisation.

Gartner did explain, however, that while spending will increase, the actual number of data centres will decline. Why? The research organisation says that the focus will shift from simple expansion to improving data centre economics – essentially ensuring they operate more efficiently.

"The future data centre is moving toward a more fluid architecture, focusing on workflow relative to how it interoperates and collaborates with other systems and cloud components to support digital business, rather than workload," said Gartner Managing Vice President Michele Caminos.

"It is also focused on what the work is doing and supporting, rather than where it is located. Organisations have to look at their data centre environment at a much higher level today."

Further data centre development is a certainty over the next few years, even if it isn't routed into new data facilities. Expansion and development of existing facilities will ensure they're able to meet the needs of businesses.

What businesses need to do

So what do companies need to do? The best option lies with educating staff about IT best practice. Essentially, this means bringing them up to speed with the ITIL qualification – a framework that helps to educate them around better IT operations.

In turn, this means there will be little trouble when it comes time to expand data centre usage within the business.

Data centre development is on the way.