It has been said that “data is king,” and that’s easy to believe in today’s information-driven world. Across the global business landscape, massive amounts of data are being gathered, stored, and mined in ways undreamt of just a generation ago. The task of storing all that data falls to data centers, which house the computer racks and servers that keep the business world humming.
Data centers have exploded on the scene in such numbers that it’s difficult to ascertain how many there actually are. “Millions” is the only plausible answer, and the number grows daily. The largest can cover millions of square feet and house tens of thousands of servers, but the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy notes that the majority of data centers consist of small server rooms and closets found in a variety of buildings owned by small and medium-sized businesses and organizations.