Five trends for 2021: Accountability, automation, edge, sustainability, innovation

What we can expect for mission-critical digital infrastructure in 2021?

Each autumn Uptime Institute, like many other organizations, puts together a list of some of the big trends and themes for the year ahead. This time, we have focused on five big trends that might not have been so obvious 12 months ago.

Heading into 2021, during a macroeconomic downturn, the critical digital infrastructure sector itself continues to expand and to attract enviable levels of new investment. The ongoing build-out of new data centers and networks is largely being driven by cloud, hosted, and “as-a-service” workloads, as more enterprises seek to outsource more of their IT and/or data center capacity. However, for many managers, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced a reassessment — of working practices and, in particular, of risk. The global economy’s dependence on IT is growing, and this is catching the attention of an increasing number of customers, governments and watchdogs.