Tony Bartlett, Dell Technologies

The enterprise datacentre is not what it used to be. For one thing, there are now new architectures, such as hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), but the passage of time has seen the migration of data to other places, such as the cloud, the colo, and the edge. More than anything else, the cloud has changed how datacentres are set up, what kind of data is in there, and migration patterns. But this doesn’t mean the datacentre has lost any relevance; data is now being produced in ever greater volumes, and in some instances, the cloud may not be the best place to keep it.

Joe Baguley, vice president and chief technology officer, EMEA, VMware, says customers often tell him they’re moving everything into a hyperscaler, but many run into problems, such as difficulties in moving some apps.