Poll: 49% of IT professionals say reducing data centre energy costs top priority

Infrastructure investment to continue over the coming years with High Performance Computing, AI and Edge data centres all on the shopping list, and 29 percent planning to relocate data centres in 2020.

A new poll from Secure I.T. Environments Ltd has revealed that reducing energy costs (46 percent) and improving energy efficiency (39 percent) are IT professionals’ key priorities for 2020.  The poll, conducted across the two days at Data Centre World 2020, found nearly a third (29 percent) will focus on relocating data centre(s) in 2020.

Asked about the top two challenges facing their IT infrastructure over the next two years, half (49 percent) cited upgrading their existing data centres as the biggest challenge.  Second was the continued pressure organisations face around regulatory compliance (37 percent), either in terms of their specific industry, or areas of general compliance related to the IT department such as GDPR, ISO27001, IASME Governance or NIST.

Respondents were also asked about areas such as budgeting and skills.  34 percent reported that recruiting skilled professionals to work in their IT departments is a key challenge for the coming years. Budgets for projects can also be a problem: 37 percent reported getting the budget they require, but 27 percent said they need to fight for every pound, and 20 percent described themselves as ‘always underfunded’.  Only 15 percent felt they got generous budgets that allowed them to do everything they require.

The pressures facing IT professionals responsible for data centres is also having an impact emotionally. Asked to comment on the emotions conjured up when they think about the current state of their IT infrastructure half (51 percent) reported negative emotions: Worry (27 percent), Anxiety (22 percent) and Despair (2 percent).  The most reported emotion was Pride at 32 percent.

The poll showed that organisations are not only looking to upgrade their data centres but invest in new technologies to support their businesses across 2020 and 2021.  Improving data centre connectivity to benefit cloud services and high performance computing were joint top at 27 percent, followed by incorporating 5G technology and artificial intelligence at 24 percent.  Edge data centres also featured heavily with a fifth (22 percent) planning to implement these to improve the performance and flexibility of their infrastructure.

“The data centre is becoming more important to organisations than ever before, as they look at new ways to grow and support staff,” said Chris Wellfair, Projects Director at Secure I.T. Environments.

“However, finding the skilled staff to deliver these transformative projects remains a challenge, even though organisations can secure the budgets needed to upgrade. Having the key personnel and external partners is critical to the long-term success of any data centre project, so the time required to assemble that team needs to be factored into any transformation project.  It’s set to be an exciting couple of years as data centres are accommodated across the UK with new technology to serve their businesses.”

The poll was conducted at Data Centre World 2020 on the 11^th and 12^th March 2020 with 123 respondents.