Businesses are struggling to ensure their data centres cope with demand, according to analyst house IDC.
Chris Ingle, an associate VP at IDC, told said that while businesses were in a “rush” to bring data centres online, “there is still more demand than supply”. Part of this was prompted by the growth in cloud computing, he said, as well as low levels of utilisation in some sites.
“Reducing demand basically involves slowing the pipeline of projects in a company which is unfortunately what organisations have to do when they reach a crisis but clearly isn’t popular,” he said.
Ingle was speaking ahead of IDC’s Evolution of the Data Centre Conference, taking place in London on 22 May.
While many data centres take 18 months to establish and bring online, “containers are a quicker way of doing this”, he said.
Additionally, Ingle advised some businesses to consider using external capacity more often. “Colocation and hosting projects in the public cloud is another supply alternative, which makes sense for some organisations.”
But he added: “Colos themselves are rushing to add space so the cost equation might not work out in the longer term.”
Additionally, many businesses needed to make better use of their existing resources, he said. “Typically increasing virtualisation and consolidation of systems is the most effective immediate thing, although many companies are already well advanced with this. New power and cooling solutions, particularly better monitoring can help reduce power demand.”
He added: “Many datacentres have grown up incrementally so looking at the distribution of equipment is often a reasonably quick way of doing something.”
Businesses faced other data centre challenges, he said. The cost of facilities, “particularly for companies who need to locate them in or near to London”, was high, he said.
“There is also a lack of available power. Perhaps this will ease slightly after the Olympics, but it will still be an issue,” he added.
