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In January 2014 a post written on Silicon Angle's blog site estimated that global data centre traffic will grow threefold (a 25 percent CAGR) from 2012 to 2017, whilst Uptime Institutes figures have noted that data centres consume up to 3% of all global electricity production. Cloud growth between 2011 and 2012 saw public cloud adoption increase from just 2 to 25% and other commentators such as The International Energy Agency has suggested that the world's energy needs could be 50% higher in 2030 than they are today.

With growth figures such as these and most industry commentators agreeing that trends show a shift from data stored in-house to either cloud providers or data centres, the onus is on data centres to deliver their services as adeptly as possible.

The importance of efficiencies in the data centre ecosystem are vastly important - from data centre design to which server to use, the amount of processing that can be achieved on a physical footprint can differ enormously. In the same way that housing developers vying for land in cities have capitalised on apartments - with the total cost for the construction of an apartment building being much less than the cost of a single property and the land footprint cost being shared by all - data centres need to maximise what they can achieve as efficiently as possible.

POWER MAD?
At its most basic level, efficiency (%) = (useful output ÷ total input) x 100. Yet this formula has a myriad of complexities due to the variations required by data centre managers in order to calculate the final figures to use for useful output and total input. Therefore, in amongst all this flux, changing figures and moving criteria, what can act as our constant? Power.

At the heart of a data centre is its ability to maintain and sustain access to an energy source 100% of the time. Every adjustment, efficiency initiative needs to ensure resilience is built into the decision making process. It is now more important than ever that every organisational change is inextricably linked with this modus operandi of the data centre.

Yet it is not enough to simply say we must stay on. Power at all costs, is not a transaction that data centres can afford; there is not an infinite pool of money to pay for soaring energy bills and inefficient data centre solutions. Whilst 'the business of data centres' on one hand can be seen to be protecting mission critical infrastructure for many organisations, 'the business of data centres' for a colocation provider is one that looks after mission critical infrastructure whilst also turning a profit for its stakeholders and ensuring that cost savings are passed down to their customers.

Data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) has been heralded by many organisations as the solution that companies need in order to drive forward efficiencies, such as mapping power losses and providing a data centre operator with a universal set of metrics to enhance their strategic planning. It also can play a role ensuring that a data centre has the capacity to deliver what is required and the awareness to always remain on.

Data centre infrastructure management is seen as an effective way of delivering core infrastructure challenges on a smaller budget. This is something that most data centre operators would agree on. However, can the same be said of a DCIM product? Can out of the box DCIM solutions truly meld and seamlessly interlink effectively with a data centre if it is not developed by the data centre itself?

ONE SIZE DOESN'T FIT ALL
Whilst the overreaching trends of data centre needs are similar, two data centres rarely have identical needs. The key to DCIM is the management of the data and information created, if developed off-site it is imperative that the engineers utilising the information can use it effectively for what they need it to do. Some data centres rather than operate DCIM products, design their systems in-house so that if there is a problem or a fault, they can find or adapt it. They are writing a specific piece of bespoke code for their own infrastructure.

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