Extreme Makeover for Data Centers

Data centers are beginning to look quite different from the energy-guzzling, inflexible server farms of the past. Many organizations are leveraging server virtualization, energy-efficient systems, or integration between internal data centers and public cloud services to boost efficiency, reduce costs and increase business agility.

Data center budgets are actually on the rise this year, reports the Uptime Institute, a Santa Clara, Calif., organization that provides research, consulting and certifications worldwide to improve data center performance and efficiency. A survey of 525 data center owners and operators in the United States, Europe and Asia conducted by Uptime in early 2011 shows that 52 percent of the organizations expect their data center budget to increase this year compared with 2010, with 27 percent saying the budget will increase by more than 10 percent.

See also: Planning Your Data Center Strategy

But that doesn’t mean organizations aren’t looking for ways to make data centers more efficient and cost-effective—or that they don’t need to make improvements. More than one-third of the companies surveyed say that at least one of their data center facilities will run out of power, cooling and/or space in 2011 or 2012. What’s more, the survey indicates that one-third of the data centers in operation are currently understaffed.

Among the technologies enterprises are implementing or considering for data center improvements are cloud computing and virtualization. In fact, 74 percent of the data center operators are considering or deploying cloud computing, and 21 percent plan to implement a private cloud in the next 12 months.

The vast majority of companies have adopted a server virtualization strategy in their data centers, and “we expect that trend to continue,” says Julian Kudritzki, vice president of the Uptime Institute.