Businesses missing power black hole

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Businesses are failing to count the cost of the energy consumed by the storage of their ever-expanding base of data.

This finding came out of a survey conducted by Hitachi Data Systems at last week's Storage Expo event in London. The vendor asked over 300 IT professionals who came onto its stand if they knew the impact of stored data on their organisation's energy consumption.

Around half had no idea, while about the same proportion said they were storing over 10Tb of information.

Hitachi concluded that electricity consumption is not registering as a major concern for businesses, even though the data they are keeping on power-hungry servers is reaching an all time high.

"While customers are actively looking at storage more strategically, our survey shows this strategic approach to storage does not yet consider environmental policy or increasing energy consumption as a factor," said Andrew Wilson, UK sales director for Hitachi Data Systems.

Wilson points out that UK electricity prices rose by 10.7% last year, citing figures from the Office for National Statistics, and he warns businesses to expect an increase of 10 pre cent each year for the next four years.

Increased electricity costs, he warns, will have a significant impact on the total cost of ownership of IT infrastructure, in some cases exceeding the purchase price of the hardware element over its lifetime.

Wilson argues that technology approaches like virtualization and tiered storage can reduce energy consumption by ensuring that data is being saved more efficiently.

Some 40 per cent of those questioned by Hitachi at the show said that they would be implementing a storage-related plan within the next three months with a view to saving costs, while 96 per cent believed that any storage project they implemented would be a strategic one rather than a tactical quick-fix.

In a separate development, engineers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California recently conducted a demonstration that they said proves DC power distribution in the data centre can save up to 15 per cent or more on energy consumption and cost.

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