UK data centres ‘in crisis’

BCS - 01/05/2007

The UK’s data centres are suffering from a lack of capacity to cope with increasing IT demand, according to new research.

About 43 per cent of data centres are seeing their physical space dwindle while power density is rising to a record high, the study by the Aperture Research Institute has revealed.

Over a third of the managers surveyed said their average rack uses between seven and 18 kilowatts or more, with the majority of respondents stating that at least three-quarters of data centre space is already reserved for IT hardware.

In addition, the various issues surrounding the use of blade servers mean that human error is increasingly leading to outages, the report warned.

‘There’s a gap between IT and data centre facilities that’s resulting in a rapid increase in high density equipment without thinking about the ability of a data centre to reliably support that capacity,’ commented Steve Yellen, vice president of marketing at Aperture.

Consultancy firm BroadGroup recently issued research findings suggesting that service revenues across European data centres are set to surpass the €3 billion (£2 billion) mark over the next two years.

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