EDITOR’S QUESTION
“
TO MAXIMISE THE
SUSTAINABILITY AND
EFFICIENCY OF THE SECTOR,
I BELIEVE THAT GREATER
COLLABORATION WILL BE
REQUIRED FROM CUSTOMERS
AND VENDORS ALIKE.
T
he demand for data centre services
is growing rapidly; the rise in digital
technologies and their associated
uses has escalated year on year and shows
no signs of slowing. With just under half the
global population still to come online, the
role that data centres play in our everyday
lives will only increase in significance.
Some industry analysts have forecast
that data centres will consume as much
as 20% of global electricity by 2025.
With such large numbers forecast,
collaboration in our industry, including the
extended supply-chain, will need to be an
absolute requirement if we are to ensure
sustainability, reduce carbon emissions and
create more efficient processes.
However, for a collaborative approach to
succeed in any industry, a large amount of
openness and transparency is required. This
can be immensely challenging when the
industry is fiercely competitive and at times
incredibly secretive. One could argue that
legislation needs to be in place to ensure
future data centre facilities are designed
36
INTELLIGENTCIO
and built to a specific standard, however the
fields of technology and legislation have
rarely moved at the same pace. In some
instances, this could be a potential hindrance
to the innovation and development of ideas
that can move the industry forward.
The Green Grid, the Open Compute
Project and the EU Code of Conduct have
provided metrics and guidelines around
energy consumption and efficiency, but
organisations such as these are largely
voluntary. While there is a tremendous
amount of focus on the large hyperscale
cloud and colocation providers, there is very
little focus on enterprise facilities.
A report by Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory in 2016 on US data centres
concluded that despite electricity
consumption rising for more than a decade
and an increase in the deployment of
large hyperscale facilities, consumption
had started to plateau, largely due to
the significant increases in the operating
efficiencies of these new and larger facilities,
making them less energy intensive.
The data centre industry is the subject of
scrutiny and constant review by industry
analysts and consultants.
It is relatively easy in this day and age to
find the total technical floor space of a
colocation provider, or the amount of MW
powering a new hyperscale facility.
However, the majority of inefficient legacy
infrastructure sits within the enterprise
sector, which is largely unpublished.
As companies migrate their services to
hyperscale and colocation providers,
inefficient legacy infrastructure will gradually
reduce. However, this is not a quick process
– migrating existing workloads comes with
a completely new set of challenges that
involve a variety of different stakeholders
within a business.
In order to maximise the sustainability
and efficiency of the sector, I believe that
greater collaboration will be required from
customers and vendors alike, to ensure new
infrastructure design and delivery meets the
real market requirements.
www.intelligentcio.com