London, 29 October 2012: UK data centres are unprepared for the massive changes that Big Data will bring, according to an independent survey of 125 senior IT decision makers commissioned by Cable&Wireless Worldwide. The in-depth research, conducted by Research Now, discovered that while many organisations have a view of the types of applications they will have to deploy in the next two years to manage Big Data requirements, they are not yet planning for the real increase in data volumes that these applications will need. The vast majority of these data centres are also power inefficient, meaning that enterprises risk their energy costs spiralling out of control as the reality of Big Data bites.
The research revealed that 55% of organisations expect data centre capacity requirements to increase over the next two years and another 34% expect them to remain constant. However, many respondents suspect that the Big Data trend has not been taken into consideration when calculating these requirements.
In the qualitative research, one Head of Data Centres for a major food retailer commented: “We have no real understanding of what [Social Enterprise, Omni-Channel Service and Big Data] mean in terms of data capacity, so they are not part of our concrete plans.”
The few companies who have begun to implement Big Data applications, and have actively planned for them in their data centres, expect their capacity requirements to increase by 40-50%, showing that the trend could have a massive impact on data centre infrastructure requirements as a whole.
Another area of little understanding, according to the research, is the strong link between a data centre’s energy efficiency and operating costs. Despite energy costs making up around two thirds of the bill for operating a data centre, only 14% of organisations review their energy charges on a monthly basis, with only 21% fully aware of what they spend on power to the data centre. Unsurprisingly therefore, only 11% of organisations have data centres with what is recognised as a good Power Utilisation Efficiency Rating (PUE) of 1.3 or less.
Michelle Senecal de Fonseca, Managing Director, Hosting, at Cable&Wireless Worldwide, comments:
“More and more businesses are trying to personalise customer services, content and advertising for their customers with the help of Big Data applications. However, without an understanding of the impact of these emerging trends on infrastructure requirements and with little grasp of how much their data centre is costing them in power, organisations run a real risk of losing control of operational costs as they try to keep up with business objectives.”
“As well as working closer with the business to better understand their future capacity requirements, IT leaders need to assess whether their current infrastructure lends itself better to renting highly flexible, energy efficient facilities, rather than building their own or relying on aging legacy infrastructure.”
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About The Research
Independent research was commissioned by Cable&Wireless Worldwide and conducted by Research Now. In June 2012, 125 IT decision makers were surveyed for a quantitative study, while 26 were interviewed in-depth to provide qualitative information.
Further details on the research findings can be found here.
About Cable&Wireless Worldwide
Cable&Wireless Worldwide provides integrated communications and data hosting services to large enterprises and mid-market customers in both the public and private sectors.
With an unrivalled heritage and a globally significant network Cable&Wireless Worldwide can provide robust and resilient connectivity to over 150 countries.
To find out more, visit www.cw.com
Contacts
For more information please contact:
Will Cameron Cable&Wireless Worldwide +44 (0)7822 803 889
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