It was the English poet, Alexander Pope, who coined the phrase ’to err is human’ way back in 1711. He was trying to convey that it is natural for people to make mistakes, and while this is undoubtedly true, there’s also a good case to be made for minimising the likelihood of error in the first place.

None of us is infallible, yet there is an idea that the human beings who operate, manage and maintain data centres should be. It’s probably why so many people are surprised when they find out that over 75 per cent of data centre outages can be attributed to human error. We’ve asked a panel of esteemed industry experts whether it could ever be eliminated and if artificial intelligence (AI) is the answer to minimising downtime.

Also in this issue we take a close look at the latest developments concerning network infrastructure management tools. Kevin Brown of Schneider Electric explains why data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) software is the critical connection for resilient, secure and sustainable IT. He's followed by Stu Redshaw of EkkoSense, who examines how visualisation and management software is helping to address the data centre engineering challenges posed by AI.

The vital roles played by containment and cable management should not be ignored, yet they are not always given the consideration they deserve. In an effort to put this right, we have two excellent articles on this subject. In the first Ian Arbuckle of Linian examines optical fibre premature collapse and explains why we should care, while in the second Tom Cabral of Chatsworth Products (CPI) takes a look at the impact of cable management on containment solutions.

Rob Shepherd
Editor