Your typical data center consists of a room with some metal racks arranged into rows with corridors between the rows. Each rack is filled with servers, networking gear, and maybe storage. The room must be kept at a consistent temperature and humidity to maintain the efficiency and reliability of the hardware components within the servers and other pieces of kit. The machines and equipment in the room also need power to run—lots of power.

Often three phases of power are needed to power back up batteries (in an uninterruptible power supply) in case of a brief power interruption, and then one or more backup power generators are used in the event of sustained mains power loss.

All of these components that make up a data center require special technical engineers to install and maintain them. All of these components also have dependencies for installing the application that runs the business code.

Once the servers are racked and plumbed into power and networking, you still need to install and configure them, as well as the operating system and the latest patches. The administration and maintenance of these things doesn't stop once the application is deployed either, so this would require dedicated operations staff.

Wouldn't it be good if we didn't have to be concerned about challenges such as finding available thermal space or adding redundant power sources? The drive to gain efficiencies in the way we do business has led to the emergence of new models, such as the next one.