The economic downturn has emerged as an unlikely driver for the adoption of green data centers.

The year 2009 signaled the entrenchment of server virtualization as a major force in data centers as well as the emergence of converged data center hardware. These trends were the standouts last year. But amid the flurry of convergence, virtualization and integration, other IT trends emerged, including cloud computing as a rival model to in-house infrastructure management and potential growing adoption of Windows Server 2008 in data centers, though IT managers remain cautious.

In the previous year, server virtualization clearly went mainstream and became a central tool to reduce hardware costs, improve server management and reduce data center power consumption. Server virtualization has enabled data center professionals to automate some server tasks, such as provisioning and configuration, and engage in more holistic data center management. With data center capacities being fully utilized, the need has arisen to build more capacity.

Most companies are riding the global economy rollercoaster, and that means data center managers and their plans and budgets need to be flexible in 2010. At the 2009 Gartner Data Center conference in early December, analysts recommended IT managers develop multiple budgets to be better prepared for various macroeconomic scenarios.

Changing Times

Many vendors today are increasingly venturing into portable modular data centers also known as data center in a box. Essentially these data centers provide the convenience and flexibility of a traditional data center as and when it is required. They have all the elements of the secure operating environments found in traditional data centers, including protection from fire, smoke, humidity, condensation, and temperature changes; hence they are often referred to as datacenter in a box. Though this concept is slowly becoming popular in the west, it has not been well received in India and given the options to host with service providers with improving connectivity, we believe that the concept will only be a niche play for certain verticals where compute power is required at a remote place. Further, data centres are adapting to the emerging cloud computing based services. Trends are emerging where data centers are being designed in such a fashion that is optimised for hosting underlying cloud infrastructure.

Most data centers today are under increased pressure to maintain high levels of efficiency and flexibility while managing costs and in some cases actually lowering costs. Increasingly complex business demands require businesses to modernize their data center, which means they need an initial investment that reaps a future reward. Transformational technologies such as virtualization, automation, and server blades are gaining significant acceptance amongst enterprises, providing a foundation for the type of performance expected of CIOs.

Virtualization enables technology organizations to bring new levels of efficiency to the data center. Because virtualization allows for multiple resources to be housed within a single CPU, attempts to standardize management and create interoperability can be a challenge. Therefore, automation is gaining more importance as a key step in virtualization. By building a data center where server management is automated, the number of virtual instances becomes irrelevant'companies can leverage the benefits of virtualization as well as execute faster provisioning of infrastructure or applications without the risk of noncompliance.

While virtualization continues to become more widely adopted, companies find themselves in the position of having to manage both physical and virtual resources, many times relying on different tools for each. Companies need to establish standard management processes and standardize on tools that let them manage physical and virtual resources in the same way. Given the range of devices being managed, real-time visibility is essential to managing the impact of change and ensuring standard compliance. Like any other technology element, virtual machines must be managed as part of the business service. This is critical to avoiding potential performance problems, as well as security and service delivery issues. Through a seamless automation platform, companies are able to leverage the benefits of virtualization as well as execute faster provisioning of infrastructure or applications.

Blade server technology plays an important role in the data center, from running everyday workplace applications to supporting mission-critical computing as well as new delivery models (such as infrastructure as a service and utility computing). Blade adoption continues to increase as customers seek the cost, change, energy, and time benefits of this hardware. Server, storage, and networking blades will continue to improve their energy efficiency and reduce data center footprints. Vendors are also now developing specialty blades, finely tuned to run a specific application.

New delivery models such as infrastructure as a service and utility computing have also gained traction in the market.

With the Coming of 3G...

The coming in of 3G is expected to increase the workload on data center infrastructure. Operators will move toward offering more multimedia based services. Although the urban user is already used to using mobile phone beyond mere voice instrument, with the proliferation of 3G technology even rural users might look at mobile device as an entertainment device, not just a phone connection. As a result, one can expect demand for entertainment (video streaming) and other hosted applications. Corporate creation and usage of applications and data on the go is also likely to increase substantially.

This increase in usage—depth and breadth from the retail and corporate users will lead to frequent access of number of applications over wireless devices, volume and speed of data exchange increasing the work load on data center infrastructure. This would inevitably lead to usage of high end servers (higher computing capacity), higher storage, back up, access control and security. In extreme cases, it might also lead to redesigning of data centers layouts, cooling and power requirements.

Data Centers and Cloud Computing

The latest buzz word in the industry today is cloud computing. This is essentially because it has the potential to completely revamp the way an organization works. According to IDC reports, cloud computing is reshaping the IT marketplace, creating new opportunities for suppliers and catalyzing changes in traditional IT offerings. In addition, over the next five years IDC expects global spending on IT cloud services to grow almost threefold, reaching USD 42 billion by 2012.

As cloud-based computing infrastructure continues to expand its influence, IT managers are being challenged to build a realistic roadmap for implementing it. It is expected that common IT needs such as email and personal productivity tools will increasingly be served from the cloud.

Cloud Computing has been made possible primarily due to technology innovations that have come up in data centers such as virtualization, and blade server technology. Datacenter requirements will go up as the adoption of private cloud and public cloud services increases.

Captive versus Hosted Data Centers

An IDC India study on the data center market opportunity covering six cities, i.e., Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune and Bangalore pointed out that while the captive market will grow only at a CAGR of 16 percent, the third party data center market will grow at a CAGR of 35 percent in the next two years. The study also revealed that an increasing number of companies in these cities will opt for third party data centers owing to benefits such as cost in terms of power, skills, real estate, availability of power and skill and maintenance of industry standards and accreditations.

Most CIOs cringe at the thought of spending more on technology each year. Further, enterprises are looking at ways to get more out of the existing IT infrastructure. This has resulted in making managed IT services a lucrative option for CIOs today.

'Green' is the Color to Be

The economic downturn has emerged as an unlikely driver for the adoption of green data centers. In an attempt to cut costs, data center owners are investigating technologies and solutions that would enhance the energy efficiency of their data centers. Information technology companies running data centers are also keen on implementing green technologies that might not have been a high priority if not for the economic slump.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, finds that cost savings, along with the economic downturn, have emerged as the main catalysts in green IT initiatives.

High energy costs are motivating Chief Information Officers (CIOs) to find technologies that will help reduce power bills. Green technologies such as virtualization, cloud computing, and power management techniques are capable of significantly lowering the energy consumption of a data center.

In the past few years, there have been several instances where companies have cut energy costs and operational expenditure by adopting green technologies in the data center. Although a majority of companies claim that they are going green due to environmental concerns, cost saving is the primary objective of adopting green IT.

Green technologies offer three main advantages. Reduced energy consumption in data centers leads to both cost and environmental benefits. In addition, the dissipation of less heat compared to typical data center hardware results in minimal cooling requirements. Virtualization also aids in significantly reducing the number of servers required for IT operations, thereby saving considerable space.

It is estimated that IT infrastructure alone contributes about 5-10 percent of the total energy utilized for running a company. Consequently, companies are scouting for technologies and solutions that would aid in significantly reducing the energy consumed by IT infrastructure.

Future Outlook

In its recently released report, Gartner predicts that the total data center capacity in India is expected to reach 5.1 million square feet by 2012 and is projected to grow 31 percent from 2007 to 2012. It is also estimated that the data center industry in India is expected to double its capacity in the next two years, and captive and hosted data centers capacities will grow at comparable rates.

"Requirement for any data center is reliability, i.e., the data centers cannot afford even a single minute failure, cost and space consumption and timely after sales support.

Uniline has the solution for all data centers like high power UPS systems with input P.F. greater than 0.99 with IGBT rectifier and efficiency of the UPS system is greater than 95 percent resulting in lower power consumption. We can also offer UPS systems rack mounted/modular configurations which require lower space and the system can be upgraded any time."

R K Bansal‚
Managing Director‚
Uniline Energy Systems