Would You Buy A Data Centre Delivered By Truck?

Businesses have to find a sustainable approach to energy use, to cut costs in an uncertain economy, and to meet increasing environmental regulations.

One of the biggest drains on energy use for large enterprises is the data centre. According to recent research by analyst Frost and Sullivan (Green Data Centres – Emerging Trends and Developments” 2009) as much as 40 percent of a company’s total power requirements could be associated with data centre infrastructure. Faced with those kind of numbers, there is considerable pressure on IT departments to reduce the cost of their computing facilities.

Is consolidation the answer?

Consolidation is one approach that has been used successfully by organisations to cut their data centre real-estate. Technologies such as virtualisation and increasing adoption of blade servers are helping this process by packing more compute power in a smaller space, although sometimes that results in higher power density requirements depending upon the technologies deployed.

And while it may be true that IT departments are under pressure to cut back IT infrastructure, business processes are becoming ever-more reliant on more sophisticated compute platforms increasing an enterprise’s IT installation. From increasing use of video-conferencing to replace carbon-intensive travel, to face-to-face contact being subsumed by social networking, computing has never been more critical.

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Akber Jaffer

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  • Building a new data centre need not incur heavy, upfront capital costs as facilities can be obtained on a lease. This will also short circuit the hunt for power, PP and so-on (no pun intended). There's also the embedded energy Perhaps Colt don't offer this ownership model which is why you don't mention it? As for modular/ scalable approaches, I believe that APC first mooted the pay-as-you-grow approach nearly a decade ago...

  • Hi Damien. Thanks for taking the time to read the article and provide your comments.
    We should distinguish between how a customer "finances" a data centre versus how they manage the challenge of building out a facility with a particular capacity when business needs and IT estate are changing so much and also when demand is so uncertain. In creating our data centres at Colt, we’re seeking to address exactly the points you make - offering a variety of models to help customers manage just these types of changing needs. Hope that helps clarify a little.
    Akber Jaffer

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