Recognized as a provider of application platforms, deployment solutions and lifecycle support services for software technology developers and OEMs throughout the globe, UNICOM (News - Alert) Engineering continuously monitors everything happening within the data center space.

When the International Data Corporation (IDC (News - Alert)) recently unveiled its findings that reveal the number of data centers in the U.S. will be significantly reduced from 2.94 million to 2.89 million within the next four years, the appliance deployment provider decided to do some research on its own to determine if this was actually true. While the findings were accurate, UNICOM (News - Alert) Engineering ultimately found that there are many key elements leading to this data center decline.

First, according to a recent blog post, in spite of the fact that the number of data centers is decreasing, the space these centers currently occupy will ramp up to nearly 700 million square feet from 611 million square feet.

“UNICOM Engineering believes this is due in large part to the ever-increasing number of service providers, particularly cloud-service providers offering Infrastructure-as-a-Service. These providers are building high-capacity mega-centers to replace smaller, underutilized capacity at remote locations. And by 2016, the IDC projects that over 25 percent of all storage capacity will be owned and operated by service providers,” the blog stated.

Next, as next-generation technological innovations continue to flood the market, companies are now able to do much more with fewer resources in tow. And as data storage requirements continue to climb over time, the migration from hard disk-and-tape storage systems to solid-state drives will take place. This in turn can cut down the amount of space servers occupy. Also, as businesses move towards leveraging fewer data centers to complete more tasks, this will ultimately result in the need for remote data centers to be completely eliminated.

Last but not least is a trend that UNICOM Engineering believes will help to consolidate servers:  driving down the cost of storage per terabyte.

 The blog added, “Because a data center requires operations and maintenance staff to be available continuously, reducing the overall number of data centers reduces this overhead. In addition, electricity for power and cooling needs as well as UPS demands are substantially diminished as the size of the data center grows.”

UNICOM Engineering was formerly known as NEI (News - Alert), and despite the name change, the company will remain a leader in creating robust platforms and appliances from the ground up that are backed by long term lifecycle management services.

To read the full report that discusses the name change, click here for more information.