Data centers are pushing the boundaries of the possible, using new paradigms to operate efficiently in an environment that continually demands more power, more storage, more compute capacity… more everything. Operating efficiently and effectively in the land of “more” without more money requires increased data center optimization at all levels, including hardware and software, and even policies and procedures.
The Existing Environment
Although cloud computing, virtualization and hosted data centers are popular, most organizations still have at least part of their compute capacity in-house. According to a 451 Research survey of 1,200 IT professionals, 83 percent of North American enterprises maintain their own data centers. Only 17 percent have moved all IT operations to the cloud, and 49 percent use a hybrid model that integrates cloud or colocation hosts into their data center operations.
The same study says most data center budgets have remained stable, although the heavily regulated healthcare and finance sectors are increasing funding throughout data center operations. Among enterprises with growing budgets, most are investing in upgrades or retrofits to enable data center optimization and to support increased density.
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