Just over 70% of CEOs see technologi- cal change as the most critical external factor that could impact on their organi- sations over the next three to five years, while 72% of chief marketing officers see cost as a barrier to using technology, technology giant IBM integrated technology services executive for South Africa Mariana Kruger reports.

“We are in a new era of efficiency and we need to address business needs [in an ever-changing information technology (IT) environment],” she said, adding that only one in five clients had efficient data centres.

Business needed to start examining the long-term operating costs of a data centre, which could be up to five times higher than the initial outlay, compared with capital expenses and output.

Power and cooling features are becoming increasingly more important than space requirements on the back of rising electricity costs. IBM believes that, over the life of the data centre, electricity costs could account for up to 75% of the operating costs.

Further, many companies, when ini- tially building a data centre, scale it to the growth expected over the 10- to 20-year life of the data centre and, in many instances, end up overspecifying and hosting a data centre too big for their current needs, says Kruger.

Companies could use their servers and storage – which in many cases are larger than required – more effectively, generating a higher return on investment and reducing the pressure on their centres.

She says IBM, which has installed thousands of data centres around the globe, believes that ensuring the “right size” data centre, using scalable capacity ability, with less complexity and increased flexibility and optimisation, will improve efficiencies and reduce costs.

Portable, modular centres are becoming increasingly popular as they can be installed at 15% to 20% less cost, and add 20% more efficiency.

Kruger comments that the use of a modular, portable data centre enables a scalable ‘pay-as-you-grow’ approach, where a company can add capacity as required.

The quick deployment of the data centre enables almost immediate support, while a company awaits the construction of a permanent data centre for up to 24 months.

Companies are also using the modular data centre for operations in remote regions, for temporary use or just as added capacity outside their buildings.

IBM’s high-density portable modular data centre aims to meet these needs and, to date, the company has deployed over 1 000 portable data centres in 24 countries.

The flexible, secure, fully customisable, cloud-enabled containerised data centre can be erected in 12 to 14 weeks and encompasses the full functionality of a traditional permanent data centre.