We live in interesting times. The once fledgling data centre industry is now showing signs of maturity, and not only in terms of how it has weathered the current economic storm. In addition it is reacting well to the wider business issues that have implications beyond the four walls of the data hall, by addressing environmental concerns that both generate and protect client brand equity in the marketplace.

In response to this increasing level of responsibility - reflected by the changing demands from our clients - Sentrum now commissions its own research to gauge the attitude of UK businesses and to understand its level of appreciation of what can be delivered in the data centre space.

If you ask any business what their key concern is to do with the data centre, the hot topic is power. 18 months ago the power debate was being driven by green awareness and the need to reduce the carbon footprint but there has been no getting away from the fact that data centres are, by their very nature, large users of power. As an industry it has been difficult to make significant changes or introduce robust green policies due to the conflicting demands in the data centre, such as 24x7 availability and the need to support power hungry high density processing and blade servers. In fact, the increase of power consumption across the industry has almost happened by default.



Naturally power costs, when you are keeping a close eye on the bottom line, quickly rise up the agenda. The initial focus of the Sentrum research this year was therefore on the subject of energy efficiency in the data centres of large UK organisations. What the findings clearly show is that almost all senior IT professionals (99%) would welcome some form of improvement when it comes to energy consumption in their data centres and 1 in 2 (53%) would still welcome a reduction in the carbon footprint of their data centre. Perhaps more telling is that 56% want to reduce the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE).

On top of those statistics, 52% of CIOs and IT managers would welcome the best advice they can get when it comes to assisting with decision making on issues around the data centre. When we compare data over just the past two years there is one very dramatic trend change that leaps off the page - 85% of large organisations now outsource at least part of their data centre space requirements, which is almost double the number from the previous year (43%). This means that the majority of large businesses in the UK should already have access to data centre operators and specialists who can advise on which route to take when facing such critical business decisions. Sadly, many of those we interviewed suggested that such advice was often not forthcoming or, worse still, was inaccurate when it was offered.

Might it be true, therefore, to say that despite all the speed of IT developments within the data centre progress is yet to be reflected by the level of efficiencies currently being delivered in data centre building? As an industry we do ourselves no favours. 90% of IT professionals said they found it difficult to determine the energy efficiency between different providers with 12% going as far as to say that they have found it extremely difficult. That is just not good enough.

Yet it’s not all doom and gloom. I have absolute confidence that data centre providers will introduce new power solutions that will become operational within three years. In the interim, and topping the list of customer requirements, is the call for improved and automated reporting capabilities that will outline energy consumption from existing hardware and software. A tool that I believe will evolve quickly as more data centre operators start to embrace the EU’s new Code of Conduct on Data Centre Energy Efficiency.

Whilst relatively few companies (12%) have so far adopted the code, introduced at the end of 2008, most (77%) say they are likely to do so in the future and, encouragingly, those who do outsource some or all of their data centre requirements are better informed about the new guidelines, which also suggests that the industry is being more proactive in working to promote the benefits of adhering to such a ‘best practice’.

What is also immediately apparent is that many (41%) believe a standardised and accurate way of rating data centres will be required to make the code effective. Overall, it can only be good business sense for data centre providers to be seen to be embracing the Code early on as, in turn, this will help to deliver a better, more compliant, self regulating industry.

Andy Ruhan is CEO of Sentrum.

The views expressed are those of the author.

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