‘How companies can succeed in the face of global competition’ is the subject of a recent White Paper sponsored by Rittal. International market research company IDC examined the influence that data centres have on the economic success of small and medium-sized businesses.
This research has shown that IT is an important factor in achieving business goals and that companies are willing to invest in technologies such as cloud, Big Data, or mobile computing, but are concerned over the potential risks.
Findings, at a glance, indicate that if a company was commercially successful last year, this has a direct impact on the IT budget and there is a direct correlation between IT spending and revenue growth.
Energy efficiency offers the potential to cut costs. 57% of respondents report PUE (power usage effectiveness) values exceeding 2.0. The closer the PUE value gets to one, the more efficient the data centre.
IT managers surveyed indicated they operate their data centres at an average of temperature of 15.5°C. Instead of cooling entire rooms, it is more efficient to work with direct cooling within the rack or in the individual aisles.
Existing redundancy concepts are often out-of-date and not sufficiently reliable to ensure the high level of availability that customers expect, therefore greater reliability is needed.
There is an investment backlog in the data centre. The participants surveyed reported that their data centres were, on average, 7 years old.
Modular data centres increase agility and scalability. This permits shorter product life cycles, as well as the more rapid commissioning of new systems or implementation of new regulations.
New technologies are changing IT strategy. IT systems need to evolve continuously so the data centre can be as efficient as possible in providing IT services. Having an in-house data centre is a key to success, as aspects such as reliability and availability have a high priority. Of the IT managers questioned 93% found it important for a company to have its’ own data centre.
“IT infrastructures need to be renewed to keep pace with the market. The question is whether to modernise or to rebuild”, explains Bernd Hanstein, Vice President Product Management IT at Rittal. “We see a great deal of potential in efficient, adaptive cooling concepts. IT managers can then fully exploit the advantages of greater flexibility and reductions in ancillary costs.”
The study is available at www.rittal.com/idc-whitepaper
