The three central pillars on which economic recovery will be built are a post-recession recovery of trade, public service reform and a successful transition to a low-carbon economy. These could be seriously hindered by any failure to create the supporting technology infrastructure – which is itself underpinned by data center dynamics.

“As we move deeper into a knowledge economy,” the report ominously warned, “our reliance on IT and data centers to deliver solutions and services will only increase, particularly as the cloud computing business model becomes more prevalent,” argued Intellect programme executive and report author Scarlett Graham.

There are big challenges facing the data center industry, and consequently the wider economy as a whole. The solutions to some of those problems lay outside of the sphere of influence of data center strategists. The power to resolve some of the conflicts lies in the hands of government, regulators and local planning legislators, many of whom are largely oblivious to the responsibility that lies with them.

“Every sector – from government to financial services, via manufacturing and telecoms – relies on data centers, not only to run efficiently, but to survive,” warned the report. “Projects like the National Programme for IT, the National Identity Scheme, smart metering and smart grids, to the London 2012 Olympics, the Oyster card and online banking all hinge on appropriate investment.”

Too many organisations lack a cohesive data center strategy, meaning that data center needs often fall by the wayside, the authors argued. Meanwhile, demand for these number-crunching factories increases; analyst IDC expects the number of servers worldwide to increase by almost 18% per annum until 2020 – an increase from 18 million (in 2008), to 122 million, fuelled by applications growth and new business models, such as cloud computing.

Just as we are becoming reliant on data centers, fate has dealt us a cruel hand, warned the report. Energy costs are spiralling as availability dwindles. Eco questions over carbon emissions are inhibiting the industry and, in a related issue, planning limitations are on the increase. Council planning officials in urban conurbations, where most data centers reside, are blocking progress, introducing cost barriers and driving industry to continental Europe to satisfy growing needs.

“This threat to the UK’s competitiveness must be addressed,” warned Graham. This could be achieved through cross-industry lobbying of government and regulators, concluded the report.

Opinion was divided on how the data center industry should represent itself to government.

AUTOMATED PROCESSES
Although the Intellect report offered little advice on how data centers will lead public service reform, Paul Wooding, head of public sector at vendor NetApps offered some ideas.

“If we agree on standards and interfaces across the web, we would create a more fluid government information architecture.

“All other utilities are delivered to the customer on a horizontal basis, for example electricity, water or gas,” said Wooding. “You don’t have an NHS electricity board, or defence electricity broad, or emergency services electricity board, you just buy electricity. If the government could buy information services in the same way, sharing information and collaboration would be less complicated and consequently a lot more cost effective.”



Rob Bamforth, principal analyst with research company Quocirca, had some words of warning: “We need to estimate the cost of transition before we talk about moving to a low-carbon economy,” he said. “If data centers enable us to automate processes that is good. But the more you automate the more you need to create common denominators in each process, or recognise exceptions to normal processes.” Either way, he warned, this will cost money and needs to be planned well.

But too often the hidden costs of an IT transition are not legislated for. It is not just about cost, argued Peregrine Newton, CEO of service provider The Bunker. An agile and flexible data center is just as important because when we come out of a slump the economy goes through a period of volatility. Markets move up and down before they stabilise, and businesses must be able to respond and adapt to that quickly. Agility in the data center is vital to the business, he argued.

“Data centers enable the knowledge economy and are vital to the resilience of public services and competitiveness of UK business,” he said.

Energy and carbon worries need to be tackled head on. Data centers swallow an estimated 3% of the UK’s total electricity usage, Newton conceded. “But IT is dependent on these data centers and it plays a vital role in improving efficiencies which reduce the carbon emissions of those sectors responsible for the bulk electricity consumption,” he argued.

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