CIO Research Reveals Datacentre Innovation Drives Efficiency

Virtualisation technology the key to unlocking savings

New research has found that the majority of organisations are centralising and consolidating their IT systems into the datacentre to increase efficiency and reduce management costs. Many are extending this centralisation to include moving processing power away from the desktop.

Virtualisation technology is increasingly being adopted to achieve efficiency gains, simplify disaster recovery processes, increase availability and provide greater flexibility. 62% of respondents stated that virtualisation is either important or very important to their organisation.

In an independent survey of 100 IT directors and CIOs commissioned by Computacenter Services and carried out by PMP Research, 54% were moving toward a more centralised IT environment with a further 25% feeling they had largely completed the task.

However, many organisations are struggling to cope with the environmental demands this migration places on the availability of space and power, and for many this restricts their ability to deploy high density technology, forcing them to either re-engineer existing datacentres or seek alternatives such as outsourcing.

Other key findings from the research include:

Terry Walby, Datacentre Solutions Director, Computacenter Services, said: “We see two recurring challenges in most UK datacentres. Firstly, many facilities were not built with today’s technology in mind and are ill equipped to provide for current demands for space, power and cooling. Secondly, the majority of datacentre infrastructure is not being used efficiently, with utilisation rates averaging 15% and as low as 5% in some instances.”  

As organisations look to resolve these issues, reduce operational costs and simplify infrastructure management, many are reconsidering the benefits of outsourcing workloads to third parties to host, operate and manage on their behalf.

Reflecting on these challenges Walby continued, “With high specification datacentre space at a premium, it’s important that organisations consider how best to equip themselves not just for today’s demands, but for the future. Upgrading and migrating datacentre facilities is a key option, but using technologies like virtualisation, deploying tools to improve automation and workload balancing, and selectively outsourcing infrastructure, application or workload components offer alternative ways to reduce demand, lower costs and provide and efficient and effective service to customers.”

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About the research
Typical respondent was a senior IT executive working for a UK based organisation employing at least 5,000 people with a turnover of £500m or above. The sample of 100 was taken equally from the banking and finance, public, manufacturing and retail sectors.

About Computacenter Services

Computacenter Services is part of the Computacenter Group, Europe’s leading independent provider of IT infrastructure services. With £267 million of services revenue in 2005 it oversees a range of managed and support services contracts for major corporations such as HBOS, THUS and BAA. It also offers transformation projects from users’ desktops to organisations’ network infrastructure and data centres. It employs over 3,000 people across the UK and Europe with an international helpdesk in Barcelona.

 

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For further information:
Octopus Communications on behalf of Computacenter:
Johnny Sollitt-Davis and Susie Loughnane
Octopus for Computacenter
01753 672 755
computacenter@octopuscomms.net