Data Center Facilities Maintenance Operations Support: Organizations are turning to new ways to improve datacenter performance while lowering power consumption, space, and cost. With surveys showing that datacenter energy efficiency is increasingly an IT priority, organizations are looking for new ways to improve datacenter performance while reducing power consumption, space, and costs.

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Organizations are turning to new ways to improve datacenter performance while lowering power consumption, space, and cost

Business as usual has taken an unusual turn. As customer demand for faster, better, and cheaper computing grows, so too does the need for energy to fuel this growth. And the numbers are alarming. According to a recent industry survey1, datacenter power requirements are increasing an average of 8 percent per year — and power requirements of the top 10 percent of datacenters are growing at an even greater pace at more than 20 percent.

A recent poll conducted by Harris Interactive found that IT executives are increasingly aware of the rising energy costs associated with powering their datacenters, with three quarters of the nearly 200 executives queried saying energy efficiency has become a buying priority.

Two years ago, a Gartner poll revealed that more than 69 percent of datacenters are power-, cooling-, and space-constrained. Since then, servers have only continued to consume more power and generate more heat, and energy prices have soared (by Sun's estimation at 30 percent per year), making this an ideal time to develop a high-performing, energy-efficient datacenter.

The Energy Information Administration2 acknowledges that the most rapid increase in demand is going to come from IT equipment. In short, the cost of powering IT infrastructure comes right off the bottom line, which is why IT professionals are now being asked to find more efficient ways to increase computing capacity.