Survey: 63 percent of companies have run out of datacenter power, space

I’m not a Trekkie, but I have vivid memories of scenes where Captain Kirk would suddenly demand of Scotty, the chief engineer, “We need more power!” when trying to complete a critical task.

These days, plenty of datacenter operators feel Scotty’s pain. According to a recent survey, 63 percent of IT organizations have run out of power, space, or cooling capacity — without warning.

That statistic, brought to us by NAS vendor ONStor, is a perfect indication of why the green technology movement is heating up. Running out of datacenter power, space, or cooling capacity without warning has some pretty dire consequences. One day, your company is humming along, enjoying growth and success. Then you realize one day, out of the blue, you discover you can’t add any more machines to your datacenter, due to lack of power, space, and/or cooling. You tell the CEO you’ve hit a capacity ceiling and have to turn away business. He hits the floor. The poop hits the fan.

That’s where a well-developed green-technology strategy comes in: Companies need to find ways to squeeze the most efficiency out of their hardware through such approaches as consolidation, virtualization, smart cooling, and good old-fashioned conservation.

Whereas 63 percent of the 369 respondents in ONStor’s survey have already suffered the consequences of insufficient planning, another 43 percent are bracing for trouble, saying that at the current data growth rate, they could only stay in their current infrastructure for another six months to a year if they changed nothing. Fortunately, they have time on their hands, plus the benefit of realizing that a threat is looming.

But how many companies will manage to act in time? According to the ONStor survey: 60 percent of respondents reported that they either have a green initiative in place, would have one in place in the next two years, or had at least talked about it with management. I’m curious how that statistic breaks down, because there’s a huge difference between having a plan and simply talking about it.

“We know from conversations with our customers that datacenter power consumption amidst the exorbitant growth of data is a key concern for CIOs and other IT professionals,” said Bob Miller, ONStor CEO, in a written statement. “What we find most interesting from this survey is how many executives aren’t implementing solutions to address these challenges. There’s a disconnect between having an awareness of the need to lower power consumption in the datacenter and doing something about it.”

Among other notable findings in the study: Nearly 40 percent of respondents said they would go green if doing so resulted in 20 to 50 percent cost savings; more than than one third would go green for 10 to 20 percent cost savings.

My take here: Clearly, a business wants an ROI on any technology investments it makes. One of the benefits of green technology is that companies can see significant and measurable long-term savings on energy bills. Moreover, if your datacenter is crammed to capacity, embracing green technology to free up space and power is a clearly superior choice over the alternative of putting a hold on your company’s growth as you invest millions of dollars and at least a couple of years building a brand new facility.

And according to the ONStor survey, that’s a realistic choice that some companies are facing: 24 percent of respondents reported that the cost and time of building another datacenter is the most serious issue driving the reduction of data infrastructure power consumption.