Very large data centres.
WHAT THEY ARE
Enormous facilities operated by the largest cloud and internet companies.
WHAT DISTINGUISHES THEM
Scale, measured in hundreds of megawatts Custom-designed equipment Automation replacing much manual work Efficiency optimised to a degree smaller facilities cannot match
WHY THEY EXIST
Enormous demand, and economies of scale.
WHAT THEY DO DIFFERENTLY
Design hardware for their own workloads Accept individual component failure rather than preventing it Build redundancy in software rather than only in infrastructure
WHAT THAT LAST POINT MEANS
Rather than making each server reliable, they assume failure and design the application to survive it.
WHY SMALLER OPERATORS CANNOT COPY THAT
It requires software designed for it, and enormous scale to be economic.
WHAT IT MEANS FOR CUSTOMERS
Cloud services are priced against that efficiency.
WHAT IT DOES NOT MEAN
That every workload belongs there.
WHAT SMALLER FACILITIES OFFER
Proximity, flexibility, local support, and arrangements suiting particular needs.
