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The survey of 320 European data centre professionals examines the ability of data centre managers to handle the growing demands on the infrastructure and their ability to deal with the increasing complexity of power management. The findings highlight the inextricable link between IT and the business: 82 percent of respondents agree that most critical business processes depend on IT and 78 percent agree that the quality in delivering IT services directly impacts business success. However, over half of all respondents (54%) say that the digitisation of core business processes is putting significant pressure on IT, while a third (33%) say pressure is building.
One of the key findings is that while operators believe there’s a need to invest more in their infrastructure and facilities, there is a skills gap in power management that needs to be addressed. More than half of all respondents believe their facilities infrastructure needs strengthening in terms of power and cooling (53%) and resiliency and DR (55%), perhaps underlined by the research findings that over a third of respondents (36%) had suffered a prolonged and disruptive outage within the last three months. 35 percent say managing power distribution within the data centre is a significant challenge, while a further 42 percent say it’s becoming more of a challenge. One in ten respondents (12%) has limited confidence in their skills to manage power, and over half (52%) only have limited confidence.
“Data centres are under a lot of pressure as they deal with continued growth and additional pressures, such as the growing use of virtualisation or new initiatives,” said Dale Vile, CEO of Freeform Dynamics, which carried out the research. He points out these pressures mean the big question facing data centre operators is how well can they keep up. “One thing that is pretty clear is that management capabilities are increasingly important” he said, “but there seems to be a widespread lack of knowledge concerning the availability of new tools that would help data centre managers. Some have already invested in new tools but others need to find out what could help them.”
“Data centre workloads are intensifying as the business places more demands on it. Those pressures are compounded by a lack of confidence in the skills, tools and expertise to manage the data centre environments effectively, particularly in power,” said Dennis O’Sullivan, Data Centre Solutions Operations Specialist at Eaton. “IT managers and data centre professionals need a simple, holistic view and integrated control of the infrastructure so that they can be confident they are managing the data centre effectively.”
The research referenced in this document was commissioned by Eaton and designed and executed by Freeform Dynamics. Input was gathered via an online survey of 320 datacentre professionals during September and October 2016. You can download a copy of the research results at www.eaton.eu/Infrastructure_with_Intelligence.
