We can resist the data tsunami

Professor Ian Bitterlin, Visiting Professor Leeds University & Consultant Critical Facilities, and a well- known figure in the international data centre industry, gave the first Simon Campbell-Whyte Memorial Keynote at the 6^th Data Centre Transformation event in Manchester today. As ever, Ian gave an entertaining overview of the many issues that the data centre industry faces right now – highlighting many of the misunderstandings and pessimistic outlooks that tend to overshadow the industry as it appears to be losing the battle between data growth and data centre costs and efficiency or, to use Ian’s chosen word, ‘effectiveness’.

Ian’s key message was that the data centre industry is very far from meltdown, so long as data centre owners, operators and users understand some basic best practices. The primary issue that needs to be addressed is increased utilisation of the IT assets that are housed inside a data centre. Average present usage rates are no better than 10 per cent, but there’s no reason why this figure cannot reach 60 per cent in the future. Alongside this simple measure, Ian also suggested that refreshing IT assets on no more than a two year cycle would lead to further significant energy savings, as vendors are constantly reducing the power requirements of their hardware units.

While these two changes will bring the most significant and immediate benefits to help increase the effectiveness of data centres, Ian also offered some more ‘ambitious’ solutions to help reduce, or at least stabilise data centre power usage. While he conceded that moderating data usage by tax or adjusted pricing models was unlikely, he did point out that some mobile phone operators are already moving away from the unlimited data usage offers that seem to be the norm, in favour of more strict cost/usage models.

Ian also suggested that if data centres’ waste heat could be re-used, this would be a significant contribution to improving the effectiveness of these facilities. While there are already examples of data centres being built near power stations and/or businesses that can re-use the waste heat, Ian thinks that, as edge computing becomes more prevalent, there is a very real opportunity to have these smaller data centres located in city centres, and their waste heat could be re-used as part of the move towards smart cities.

Finally, Ian outlined some of the technology developments that will contribute towards further data centre effectiveness over time, including the paradigm shift away from silicon (probably to graphene), developments in the super-conducting micro-electronics space and a ‘sea change’ in network photonics.