Prolonged Supply Chain and Talent Challenges Test Enterprises’ Data Center Strategies

The strains on the global supply chain continue to affect everyone, from consumers to multinational corporations. The New York Times reported Jan. 16 that “Companies are bracing for another round of potentially debilitating supply chain disruptions as China, home to about a third of global manufacturing, imposes sweeping lockdowns in an attempt to keep the Omicron variant at bay.”

Data center managers feel the pain through lengthened delivery times tied to shortages in the components needed to build servers, storage and network equipment. Experts predict it could be two more years before things are back to normal. 

At the same time, as the COVID-19 pandemic begins its third year of devastation through the rapidly spreading Omicron variant, strains on talent availability and retention are also making life harder for IT and operations teams who are tasked by their businesses with maintaining service levels and enabling the digital modernization that’s become critical for success and growth. 

Computer Weekly recently summarized a report from the data center resiliency think tank Uptime Institute: “The pandemic, extreme weather and political instability have all disrupted global supply chains of late. This is forecast to continue, with restricted supplies of certain types of key components, including chips, power electronics and even electrical equipment.” 

“In a survey conducted for the report, the Uptime Institute found that many suppliers expect to see problems with the supply chain for critical data center products and services continue over the next two years.” 

“The prediction is that this will affect either capital expenditure (capex) projects or general availability of IT equipment – possibly both. Only one in four suppliers indicated that they expect to see no delays or impacts.”

At CDS we continue to find both the supply-chain and workforce challenges at the forefront of new conversations and deepened relationships with our customers and partners. 

To buy time waiting for new shipments of infrastructure, our OEM partners are bringing CDS into data centers around the world to provide the services needed to extend the useful life of their existing hardware. 

CDS has become an insurance policy for the leading infrastructure providers and their customers to keep running and growing until shipments of new products can be delivered.  

With technical professionals increasingly difficult to hire and some experienced staff leaving amid “The Great Resignation,” not to mention pandemic conditions reducing onsite staff, we are also finding more and more CDS multi-vendor service teams answering the call. With global reach and Level 3 professionals who are trained on all the leading hardware platforms, CDS and our Raytrix MVS software platform can plug gaps in personnel for any data center environment. 

The remote monitoring capabilities of Raytrix MVS stretch across the infrastructure estate to prevent work-from-home realities from slowing down business. As our CEO, Dan Newton, just explained in this published article, we are seeing “a seismic shift in how we monitor and manage infrastructure.”  

Supply chain issues will continue through 2022 and beyond, impacting the timely availability of new storage, server, and network infrastructure for data centers. Talent challenges may lessen if the pandemic lightens its impact, but both issues will cause enterprise organizations to experience the extension of project timelines and will require maintenance and support for existing infrastructure for longer than expected. A true multi-vendor services partner can make a big difference for both OEMs and their enterprise customers.