Emerson Network Power Presents Data Center Survey Results

Ninety-six percent of today’s data centers will run out of capacity by 2011

Emerson Network Power has released results from a new industry survey highlighting the impact of rising densities on data centers. Bob Bauer, Emerson group vice president and Liebert Worldwide president, previewed the results during his keynote address at Emerson’s recent AdaptiveXchange 2006™ customer event.

The survey was conducted by the Data Center Users’ Group (DCUG), a group of influential data center and facility managers formed by Emerson Network Power. It posed questions to the DCUG membership on a variety of data center topics, including power management, precision cooling, energy efficiency, technology implementation and consolidation. One of the major findings of the survey is that 96% of current facilities are projected to be at their capacity by 2011.

“The data center lifecycle is shrinking,” said Bauer. “Aggressive corporate growth plans, along with the use of new, more powerful server technologies are pushing data centers to their limits. Many facilities have the physical space to add more equipment, but lack the power and cooling capacity to support that equipment. The only way companies are going to overcome this obstacle is by designing for higher densities and employing adaptive IT infrastructures that allow greater flexibility to adapt to change.”

The survey confirmed that heat and power density are major IT concerns, with 40% of respondents citing either heat density or power density as the biggest issue they are facing. Other issues included space constraints (19%), adequate monitoring capabilities (8%) and availability/uptime (7%). Forty-four percent also cited either power or cooling as the major constraint on their data center capacity.

According to the survey, consolidation is also gaining momentum in the industry with 56% of respondents having either completed, or being in the process of, consolidating data centers. An additional 18% said they were evaluating the option.

“Data center consolidation is easier with today’s network performance, and can significantly reduce IT operating costs,” said Bauer. “This, in turn, is requiring higher availability and driving the need for mission-critical protection beyond the large data centers and into many network applications. Emerson Network Power is committed to making it possible for companies to easily adapt to these changes, and to support future technologies while maintaining high availability and containing costs.”

The survey also showed that data center energy efficiency is fast becoming a priority in the industry, with 42% of survey respondents saying they have either analyzed efficiency or are currently analyzing it. Respondents perceived the greatest opportunities for energy efficiency to be in the areas of cooling equipment (49%), servers (46%), power equipment (39%) and storage (21%).