Data Center (glossary)
The data center is the department in an enterprise that houses and maintains back-end information technology (IT) systems and data stores—its mainframes, servers and databases. (Gartner 2012)
Source(s)
Gartner 2012. "Data Center". Accessed 25 July 2012. Available at: http://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/data-center/.
Discussion
In the days of large, centralized information technology (IT) operations, this department and all the systems resided in one physical place, hence the name data center.
With today’s more distributed computing methods, single data center sites are still common, but are becoming less so. The term continues to be used to refer to the department that has responsibility for these systems, no matter how dispersed they are.