New research has found that the majority of organisations are centralising and consolidating their IT systems into the data center to increase efficiency and reduce management costs. Many are extending this centralisation to include moving processing power away from the desktop. Virtualisation technology is increasingly being adopted to achieve efficiency gains, simplify disaster recovery processes, increase availability and provide greater flexibility. 62% of respondents stated that virtualisation is either important or very important to their organisation.
In an independent survey of 100 IT directors and CIOs commissioned by Computacenter Services and carried out by PMP Research, 54% were moving toward a more centralised IT environment with a further 25% feeling they had largely completed the task.
However, many organisations are struggling to cope with the environmental demands this migration places on the availability of space and power, and form any this restricts their ability to deploy high density technology, forcing them to either re-engineer existing datacenters or seek alternatives such as outsourcing.
Terry Walby, datacenter solutions director, Computacenter Services, said: "We see two recurring challenges in most UK datacenters. Firstly, the age of the facility means it was not built with today's technology in mind and is ill equipped to provide for current demands for space, power and cooling. Secondly, the majority of data center infrastructure is not being used efficiently, with utilisation rates averaging 15% and as low as 5% in some instances."
As organisations look to resolve these issues, reduce operational costs and simplify infrastructure management, many are reconsidering the benefits of outsourcing workloads to third parties to host, operate and manage on their behalf.
Reflecting on these challenges Walby continued: "With high specification data center space at a premium, it's important that organisations consider how best to equip themselves not just for today's demands, but for the future. Upgrading and migrating data center facilities is a key option, but using technologies like virtualisation, deploying tools to improve automation and workload balancing, and selectively outsourcing infrastructure, application or workload components offer alternative ways to reduce demand, lower costs and provide and efficient and effective service to customers."