New findings from the UK data centre industry suggest that companies need to focus more than ever on economic factors

It is critical that Sentrum has a quantifiable view of its market in order to be able to better understand the issues that drive customer decision making,” says Andy Ruhan, CEO at Sentrum. “For the past two years, we looked at the industry through annual research programmes and have tracked the changing attitudes towards the data centre amongst IT decision makers.  The reports have illustrated some worrying trends that the industry needs to address right now to secure future growth.”

Following an increase in the outsourcing of data centres, and according to Sentrum’s latest research report entitled “Energy: the currency of the data centre”, decision makers are now seriously focusing on the crucial economic factors that affect the bottom line and power consumption is the key issue.

When it comes to the economics of running the data centre, and perhaps not surprisingly, 99% of IT professionals questioned across the UK would welcome improvements in energy consumption.  Within the data centre industry the research suggests that businesses and associated consultants are failing to communicate best practices regarding energy usage to customers.  An incredible 90% of IT professionals said they found it difficult determine the energy efficiency between different providers, with 12% of respondents grouped into that category even going as far as saying that they have in fact found it extremely difficult.
Worryingly, the research also failed to detect any correlation between consultant advice on the specifications of recent data centre builds and the insight amongst the CIO and IT Managers questioned - despite just over half expressing an interest in receiving specialist advice and recommendations relating to energy consumption. It was also shocking to discover that almost 23% of organisations felt that their latest data centre development was over-specified and yet underutilised.

Sentrum believes that this problem stems from the fact that for far too long the data centre industry has failed to introduce any form of self regulation. At best, the report said that advice is often not forthcoming whilst at worst respondents suggested that when advice is offered it can often be inaccurate.

Yet, and even when faced with climbing energy prices, the report demonstrated that almost all of the IT professionals questioned (99%) would only like to fix the price of the power supplied to the data centre on short-term agreements.  Interestingly, CIO and director-level IT professionals favoured the shortest fixed term contracts of just six months.  But even these cautious reactions to pricing fail to address the underlying and long term issues of high power consumption.

The methodology that Sentrum has introduced to counter these issues is that the immediate business demand is now not necessarily for data centre space, but rather the flexibility that it can offer. This thinking is justified from the latest report findings, which show significant growth in the number of large organisations that have outsourced at least part of their data centre space requirements – up from 43% last year to 85% this year. There’s no doubt that much of the impetus to outsource has come about as a result of the current economic environment, but Sentrum firmly believes that companies are also looking for better managed facilities in which their data is housed.

One element of the different approach that Sentrum offers is that the team is already pro-actively working with customers to demonstrate how even the smallest increase in temperature in the data centre can deliver substantial energy savings and reduce bottom line costs.  Interestingly, none of the CIOs or director-level IT professionals questioned knew that such a small increase - just 1 degree centigrade - could have such an impact in the data centre and that needs to change.

UK businesses all carry a responsibility to reduce the carbon footprint of data centres and making a positive impact is well within our capabilities simply by using automated reporting to address levels of energy consumption, and ultimately improving the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE). Sentrum will continue to work with its customers to educate them on how to make the data centre more energy efficient and cheaper to run and encourages other industry players to follow this example.

• Sentrum