AI to reinforce not replace humans in data, IT industries

During the course of the pandemic artificial intelligence (AI) has well imposed its role in business processes across all industries. In the data center automation field, it is drastically changing not just data centers but the infrastructure as whole. 

Experts predict that data centers, with the support of AI, should be less costly to run. However, the talent shortage for data center operations will persist if not get worse. Tech journalist Arthur Cole wrote about what AI would mean to data centers and the IT industry on Venture Beat.

AI of all trades

Cole writes that according to Rohan Sheth, of colocation provider Yotta many companies are still wary about fully adopting AI due to a combination of mistrust, lack of skill sets and the potential risk for disruption.

However, Cole wrote that this won’t last forever.  During the thick of the pandemic 83% of organizations increased their budgets for AI and machine learning (ML), and this fast-tracked processing speeds by 30% and has brought data bottlenecks to record-low levels. 

IT job growth

As for the information technology industry. While the idea of automation may be scary for IT professionals, the demand for them will still prevail. A recent report from the Uptime Institute reveals that human operators are set to increase from today’s 2 million to 2.3 million by 2025, even as upwards of 90% of IT executives expect AI to take on many of the rote, repetitive tasks of data and infrastructure management. 

The IT workforce is expected to face the challenges managing the growth of data loads while maintaining consistency and controlling costs. In this department AI can assist human IT counterparts.

And while AI is poised to infiltrate many aspects of the data center, the fact remains that much of the physical infrastructure is still not ready for the change. A recent Gartner report noted that much of the mechanical infrastructure is still lacking the kind of sensor-driven monitoring capabilities that are essential to intelligent control. This means much of the data center infrastructure management (DCIM) stack will likely remain on a manual footing for a few more years at least, even as data loads and resource utilization will climb due to the advent of 5G and the IoT-connected edge.

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