Energy costs could skyrocket to more than half of
overall IT budget in the next few years, warns
Gartner.
Today, energy costs eat up less than 10% of IT budget, but
unless companies pay closer attention to curbing the power-lust of
datacentres this will cost both the environment and their budgets
dearly.
“The bottom line is that the cost of power on this scale would
be difficult to manage simply as a budget increase and most CIOs
would struggle to justify the situation to board members,” warns
research vice president Rakesh Kumar.
A major contributor to spiralling energy consumption is the
popularity of high-density servers in datacentres over the last 12
months. Blades can rattle through 10 to 15 times the power needed
for traditional servers, which older datacentres are struggling to
manage. All this power creates vast amounts of heat requiring
further power to cool systems down.
Gartner calls on CIOs to create 'greener' datacentres where
possible and to apply pressure on suppliers to create more
environmentally friendly systems. They should also delay moves to
high-density systems by making better use of virtualisation to
balance demand.
“The writing is on the wall for CIOs. Whatever way you look at
it they have to take control of the impending power crisis and
datacentre management will be crucial to that,” warns Kumar.