In Depth
In Depth
Datacentre energy efficiency and green IT
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Tips to improve IT sustainability
With every business function being asked to look closely at their carbon footprint, we look at ways to achieve greener IT operations Continue Reading
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The rising prominence of hybrid cloud in the Nordics
Many Nordic organisations have opted for hybrid cloud environments, subscribing to the newest services without giving up what they already have. Best practices are beginning to emerge for managing the heterogenous environment Continue Reading
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Waste not, want not: How datacentre heat reuse projects can power ahead
The Nordics, Netherlands, Germany and Canada are progressing district heating initiatives that save energy and emissions, although obstacles remain Continue Reading
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Datacentres’ energy-efficiency investment priorities in the race to net zero
Operators seeking to prioritise one pathway over another to reach sustainability targets may be disappointed, experts warn Continue Reading
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CXL in the datacentre: Boosting memory for hungry workloads
We look at CXL, how it revolutionises connectivity between memory components, potentially saves energy, and adds oomph to heavily memory-dependent workloads such as AI analytics Continue Reading
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Tackling Scope 3 emissions in materials to help meet datacentre climate goals
Fanciful carbon accounting practice might not help much with emissions reduction, but specific materials values are already on offer from steel makers and the like that can assist datacentre operators Continue Reading
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How APAC organisations can drive IT sustainability
From using liquid cooling and optimising data storage to tapping renewable energy and recycling tape drives, organisations across the region are upping their sustainability efforts Continue Reading
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Is the UK datacentre industry set for further consolidation?
Turbulent times make it tricky to predict which way markets will jump, yet UK datacentres continue to grow and hold investor attention Continue Reading
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The impact of generative AI on the datacentre
While artificial intelligence will not live up to its name any time soon, mass adoption of large language models, whether by customers or in-house, requires thinking about by enterprise IT leaders Continue Reading
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PLC flash: The next generation or a mirage?
PLC could be productised within two years, but chip makers might not think it worth the effort. Will managing multiple voltages be more hassle than adding layers to existing flash? Continue Reading
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How sustainability software bears broad benefits beyond cost savings
The imperative for organisations to do a better sustainability job is clear. There is business software that can help, with data at its core, and smart companies are acting now Continue Reading
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Driving up IT efficiency and sustainability
IT leaders need to balance IT sustainability with business drivers to innovate with digital technologies and ensure corporate systems remain secure Continue Reading
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Gartner: Use digital to achieve sustainability goals
Sustainability guides decision-making by incorporating economic, social and environmental impacts. Gartner looks at digital technology’s role Continue Reading
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The race to net zero: Six ways to slash IT infrastructure emissions
Strategies aimed at successfully cutting climate risk can appear to be stymieing business sustainability. How can the industry remain productive? Continue Reading
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Green tech and the private sector: How the UK government will hit its 2050 net-zero emissions goal
The UK government is targeting net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, but it will need the private sector’s help and its appetite for investing in green technologies to meet its goal Continue Reading
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Schneider Electric on why datacentre operators need to close the ‘sustainability gap’
Datacentre operators sometimes have a hard time ensuring their actions match their words and pledges on sustainability matters, which could put the industry at risk of greenwashing accusations, Schneider Electric warns Continue Reading
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Green storage: Savings to be made but tricky to achieve
Storage upgrades can bring energy savings. New hardware, the cloud and as-a-service procurement models all cut costs, but can need careful tweaking to get right Continue Reading
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Why the devil’s still in the detail in the race for energy efficiency
Energy-efficiency credentials are surely a step in the right direction, but cloud and datacentre providers must look at the sustainability equation from all angles Continue Reading
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Datacentres in the dark: How the sector is preparing for the prospect of planned winter power cuts
Against a backdrop of ongoing uncertainty in the energy market, the UK datacentre market is readying itself for ‘worst case’ planned power cuts this winter Continue Reading
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Computer simulation at work for the future of nuclear fusion
Nuclear fusion works, just not yet well enough. Learn how software simulations running on modern supercomputers and data science are lighting up possible paths forward Continue Reading
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IT sustainability strategies: Why enterprises need to start with the datacentre when going green
Enterprises are under pressure to curb their carbon emissions and become more environmentally friendly entities on multiple fronts, including in the datacentre Continue Reading
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Carbon copies: How to stop data retention from killing the planet
Our society has a serious digital hoarding problem, which is coming at a cost to the environment. But what can be done to address it? Continue Reading
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AIOps for storage: Potential huge benefits, but lots of lock-in
Applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to storage can help to predict bottlenecks, diagnose I/O issues and recommend upgrades, but suppliers’ products are largely limited to their own hardware Continue Reading
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How water conservation and management floats on cloud
From the cloud comes our water supply – an essential building block and life support system increasingly underpinned by IT infrastructure Continue Reading
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Burning up: Mitigation should sustain datacentre operations during extreme heat
July’s temperature spike put headline heat on regional operations at Google and Oracle. Datacentre operators must side-step similar mistakes to avoid climate change-related collapse in future Continue Reading
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Icelandic datacentres may lead the way to green IT
Iceland may soon become even more attractive to companies wanting to minimise their carbon footprint while using high-performance computing services Continue Reading
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How IoT and digital twins could help CIOs meet ESG pledges
Many local authorities have set ambitious net-zero targets. Can IoT technology, allied to digital twinning, help CIOs hit them? Continue Reading
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How to track greenhouse gas emissions
Companies from a range of sectors, as well as public authorities, are using software and data analytics to track greenhouse gas emissions, partly to meet new regulatory demands Continue Reading
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IT departments need holistic circular economies to fight climate change
With sustainability moving up the boardroom agenda, IT managers should revamp procurement strategies to align with the principles of the circular economy, but what does this mean for managing the IT lifecycle? Continue Reading
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Hydrogen’s promise: How fuel cells might power lower-carbon datacentres
Could UK datacentre operators soon adopt emerging hydrogen technologies to reach expanding energy and emissions requirements? Continue Reading
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Will AWS pledge to extend life of servers inspire other cloud firms to follow suit?
Amazon’s recent announcement to extend the useful life of its datacentre equipment has been deemed a positive decision for the cloud computing giant, but will other companies adopt this cost-saving and sustainability strategy? Continue Reading
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Interview: LF Energy on using open source to ready energy systems for phasing out fossil fuels
With the climate crisis putting increasing pressure on countries to decarbonise their economies, the founder of open source championing LF Energy talks about digitising power networks to be ready for renewables Continue Reading
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Weighing up the nuclear option for powering datacentres
Resourcing energy-hungry IT through the race to reduce carbon emissions means looking objectively at all the options, including nuclear power Continue Reading
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A waste of energy: Dealing with idle servers in the datacentre
Servers can be the slackers of the datacentre, consuming power without doing much work. Why not whip them into shape? Continue Reading
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Datacentres and climate change: Operators accused of being all talk and no action on sustainability
Datacentre operators talk a good fight when it comes to tackling climate change, but there is far more they should and could be doing to make their operations more sustainable, say experts Continue Reading
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Decarbonising datacentres: Turning the hot air about heat reuse into real-life use cases
Reusing waste heat from datacentres to warm local businesses and homes could bring about considerable reductions in carbon emissions and lower energy costs, so what needs to happen to make this a more widespread practice? Continue Reading
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Cracking the code on blockchain and crypto: What might adoption mean for datacentres?
A high share of datacentre customers look set to adopt blockchain technologies, including digital currencies, over the next few years Continue Reading
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How to beat the heat: What can datacentre operators do to meet emissions targets?
With new mandates around sustainability proliferating, datacentres must find ways to meet their environmental goals while remaining competitive and meeting customer service-level expectations Continue Reading
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How to make AI greener and more efficient
Artificial intelligence promises both to combat the ill effects of climate change and to make the emergency worse with excessive energy use. How can AI be made greener? Continue Reading
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How can enterprises avoid datacentre supply chain issues affecting IT upgrades?
With analysts predicting that the current datacentre component shortages could last for at least two years, CIOs are being advised to act now to prevent the situation affecting their IT upgrade plans Continue Reading
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Riskier business: How Brexit could be changing downtime risk and resilience in the datacentre
As the UK enters the final quarter of its first year from the Brexit transition period, the risk picture for local datacentres remains unclear Continue Reading
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Could Iceland be the best place in the world for high-performance computing?
Most of Iceland’s cheap, sustainable energy is currently used by aluminium smelters, but recognising the need to diversify, the Landsvirkjun power company now promotes other uses Continue Reading
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Climate change and datacentres: Weighing up water use
Given that a mid-sized datacentre uses as much water as three average-sized hospitals, green IT needs to start considering water usage Continue Reading
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The second coming: The Nordic datacentre market comes of age
As concerns mount about space and power constraints within several of Europe’s largest datacentre hubs, enterprises are being urged to consider shifting more of their energy-intensive workloads to the Nordic countries Continue Reading
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Uninterruptible power in the datacentre: Choosing between sustainability and uptime
With datacentres under heavier pressure to decarbonise, could even the lowly UPS play a larger role? Continue Reading
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Hybrid IT: Making datacentre and cloud work better together in the enterprise
Enterprises are increasingly trying to balance and manage IT assets in a variety of environments, but there are plenty of tools and technologies out there to make the job a lot easier Continue Reading
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APAC datacentres gear up for the future
Datacentre operators in the Asia-Pacific region are dabbling in advanced power and cooling solutions, along with machine learning and edge computing, to keep pace with growing demand for their services Continue Reading
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Dublin in distress: Power supply issues threaten growth of Europe’s second-biggest datacentre hub
Dublin’s standing as Europe’s second-biggest datacentre hub could be on potentially shaky ground as Ireland’s electricity infrastructure creaks under the pressure of so many power-hungry server farms plugging into the national grid Continue Reading
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Post-pandemic IT: Are virtual datacentre tours here to stay?
A physical tour of a datacentre has traditionally been a key marketing and selling tool for colocation operators, and the Covid-19 pandemic has forced many to provide virtual alternatives. But how do they compare? Continue Reading
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Nautilus Data Technologies CEO on building waterborne datacentres in the name of sustainability
James Connaughton, CEO of waterborne datacentre design champion Nautilus Data Technologies, sets out why the firm is convinced that water-cooled facilities are the answer to the tech industry’s sustainability woes Continue Reading
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Gartner: How to turn old datacentres into critical IT assets
IT infrastructure and operations leaders are increasingly focusing on new ideas and technologies alongside ways to deliver business value Continue Reading
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Five ways to boost systems utilisation in the datacentre
Datacentre operators are always looking for ways to cut costs and improve the efficiency of their facilities. Here we ask the experts for their top five tips for reducing the operating costs of running a server farm Continue Reading
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NHS datacentre transformation projects continue apace during pandemic
NHS trusts have continued to invest in their datacentre estates throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, but the nature of their upgrade projects continues to evolve Continue Reading
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The driving force behind the EU colocation market’s climate-neutral push
Colocation and hyperscale datacentre providers across Europe are under pressure from governments, regulators and the user community to curb carbon emissions Continue Reading
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Datacentre energy efficiency: Is the time now for a big switch-off?
The clock is ticking on sustainable IT and energy use, and much more can be done to save energy, power and reduce emissions at a datacentre level. So why isn’t it happening? Continue Reading
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CTO interview: Octopus Energy on using cloud power to get consumers to flip the switch on renewables
Octopus Energy is on a mission to disrupt the global energy market, and is banking on the AWS cloud and an innovative software licensing agreement to help it do just that Continue Reading
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Coronavirus: How Covid-19 has elevated the status of the datacentre industry
The pandemic has served to highlight just how dependent the world is on the datacentre community – and governments, policy-makers and investors are taking note Continue Reading
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Coronavirus: Hardening up datacentre equipment supply chains post-Covid-19
Fears about hardware shortages, staff absenteeism and how to keep sites up and running with social distancing have dogged the datacentre sector since the start of the pandemic, so how is the sector faring? Continue Reading
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Datacentre liquid cooling: What needs to happen for it to become commonplace in colocation?
As demand for increasingly dense racks and compute-heavy workloads increases within datacentres, could this lead to a wholesale shift in preference from air-to-liquid-based cooling systems? If so, at what cost to the environment? Continue Reading
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Edge computing environments: what you need to know
An edge case in business sits at the limits of what's viable, and edge computing requirements suggest a similar struggle Continue Reading
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Lean, mean and green: The datacentres of the future
Working out how to develop more efficient datacentres in an increasingly resource-hungry world is not easy, but it is possible Continue Reading
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Datacentres operators must move away from diesel backup generators to give back to grid
While the diesel backup generators used by datacentre operators have a limited environmental impact, using them for extended periods of time to power sites to feed energy back into the grid is not a sustainable solution to growing electricity demand Continue Reading
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Mixing it up: Cloud and datacentre in the new world of IT
Cloud computing has long been tipped as the technology that will displace enterprise datacentres in CIOs’ affections, but that is not quite how the story is playing out Continue Reading
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From consumer to prosumer: Reducing the datacentre industry’s reliance on the national grid
With the government ramping up plans to go net zero on carbon emissions by 2050, where does the datacentre industry stand – and how can it become more sustainable over the coming years? Continue Reading
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Unpicking the datacentre industry’s complicated relationship with climate change
The energy usage habits of datacentres often see the sector labelled as a contributor to climate change, but the situation is far more nuanced than that, it seems Continue Reading
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Log management: Helping IT admins to achieve infrastructure-wide visibility
When properly configured and deployed, log management tools can unearth a veritable treasure trove of data that IT administrators can use to triage and diagnose problems in enterprise IT infrastructures Continue Reading
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Evolution in action: The changing face of the datacentre
The role datacentres play in the wider enterprise IT landscape is changing, fuelling the demand for a mix of different types of facilities that are capable of meeting the growing variety of enterprise data-processing requirements Continue Reading
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Blackout after Brexit: UK datacentres brace for post-EU power supply and cost changes
As the uncertainty over how the UK intends to extricate itself from the European Union rumbles on, datacentre operators are weighing up how Brexit might affect the availability and cost of the power they need to run their facilities in future Continue Reading
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Room to spare: Could space constraints slow London's record-breaking datacentre growth spree?
The London colocation market enjoyed another record year of growth in 2018, thanks to the hyperscale cloud community's insatiable demand for datacentre capacity. But is the capital running out of space? Continue Reading
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Intel Cascade Lake vs AMD Rome: Who will rule the datacentre roost in 2019?
Intel and AMD are both making a renewed push into the enterprise datacentre market in 2019, with both set to release new processors. We take a look at what they have to offer Continue Reading
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Dividing lines: EU bid to curb server energy use has the European datacentre community split
An EU-backed push to curb European datacentre energy use has proven to be a divisive issue, as debate rages over the usefulness of using idle energy to determine the overall efficiency of servers Continue Reading
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Mergers and acquisitions: Bringing together separate IT departments
Bringing together the assets of two separate companies can be a fraught business, particularly when it comes to merging IT departments Continue Reading
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Serverless computing: What it is and why it matters
Enterprises might be forgiven for thinking serverless computing is just the latest in a long line of hyped technology concepts, but there is serious substance to it Continue Reading
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Are gas-powered datacentres all hype and hot air?
As concerns about how the proliferation of datacentres will affect electricity supplies continue to be raised, some are experimenting with natural gas as an alternative energy source. But is it a viable, long-term solution? Continue Reading
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The EURECA moment: Counting the cost of running the UK’s public sector datacentres
The EU-backed EURECA project has spent the past 36 months assessing the state of public sector datacentres across Europe, and is revealing what it found Continue Reading
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Cloud management platforms: What you need to know to make multi-cloud happen
Deploying a cloud management platform can make adopting a multi-cloud approach to consuming IT resources easier, but choosing one that is the right fit for your enterprise can be a challenge for CIOs Continue Reading
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Upset in Athenry: Examining the impact of Apple's delayed Irish datacentre build
Apple is set to hear at the end of this month whether its much-delayed Irish datacentre build can go ahead. Computer Weekly examines the ins and outs of this complex case Continue Reading
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Looking beyond PUE to assess the true environmental impacts of datacentre growth
Sustainability experts want operators to look beyond the accepted datacentre metrics to assess the impact the industry's growth is having on the environment Continue Reading
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Datacentre cooling upgrades: Helping operators decide where best to invest
Upgrading a datacentre cooling system is an expensive undertaking, but should operators stick with what they've always done or try something new? Continue Reading
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CW@50: The changing face of the datacentre over the past 50 years
As Computer Weekly prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary, we take a look back at how the design and role of the datacentre has changed over the past five decades Continue Reading
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Datacentre heat reuse: Why aren’t more operators doing it?
With the datacentre industry’s sustainability habits coming under increasingly close scrutiny, we find out why operators are not rushing to reuse their waste heat Continue Reading
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Microsoft’s underwater datacentre: The pros and cons of running subsea facilities
Underwater datacentres can help providers save on land costs and cooling, but at what cost to the environment? Continue Reading
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Datacentre PUE: Who's keeping score?
With datacentre operators under increased competitive pressure to cut their PUE scores, are their ratings really all they seem? Continue Reading
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Energy-efficient Europe: How the datacentre sector is keeping it clean
With users becoming increasingly savvy about environmental issues, we take a look at how the datacentre sector is responding Continue Reading
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Future of in-house datacentres in the cloud era
It is predicted that companies will spend three times more on the cloud by 2017. But as cloud goes mainstream, are in-house datacentres really dying? Continue Reading
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The UK’s problem with power
Datacentre power buyers say Britain’s deregulated energy market is as complex as trading in derivatives Continue Reading
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How Capgemini keeps its Merlin datacentre green and energy-efficient
Capgemini's Swindon-based Merlin datacentre is one of the most energy-efficient in the world. But what makes it green? Continue Reading
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Top technologies that can make your datacentre green
Energy-efficient technologies that can reduce running costs in the datacentre and across the business Continue Reading
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How to effectively manage datacentre temperature and humidity
A datacentre is a complex facility with different cooling equipment and power systems. Here's how to monitor its temperature and humidity Continue Reading