InformationWeek Reports, a service provider for peer-based IT research and analysis, announced the release of its latest research report - 2012 State of the Data Center. The report encompasses analysis of results from InformationWeek's recent State of the Data Center Survey and offers guidance on how far to drive virtualisation and how to balance the benefits and drawbacks of standardising on software and hardware. Of the 256 business technology professionals responding to this poll, 36% are from organisations with 5,000 or more employees.
According to the report, IT faces a delicate balancing act between standards and customisation, efficiency and flexibility, and operational control versus outsourced convenience. Hardware that packs more performance punch into every cubic inch has ratcheted up data center power and cooling demands to the point where simply renovating old facilities is often not an option, even as big construction projects are harder than ever to justify. These twin trends mean organisations may be forced to embrace the cloud or co-location despite any real or imagined downsides. This report examines these issues and more, and offers some tips for transforming data center strategies to meet changed conditions.
Findings reveal that 73 percent of survey respondents say data center demands will increase compared to last year. More than 65 percent IT budgets are spent on maintenance, with just 33 percent going to innovation. While 50 percent say at least half of their servers will be virtualised by 2013, 57 percent cite cost savings as the most important metric to measure the success of server virtualisation.
The report author, Kurt Marko, is editor at large for InformationWeek Reports and an IT industry veteran. For full access to the research data, members can download now: http://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/6/8845/Data-Center/research-2012-state-of-the-data-center.html?cid=rpt_press_rls.
