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Due to a variety of factors, such as virtualization and enhanced processing power, data center growth continues almost unabatedly. Although these advances in technology continue to enable companies to place more servers within a rack and benefit from geometric increases in their processing capability one common thread still underscores every data center scenario — the need for power.

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As the need for power continues to escalate within the data center world, the search for solutions is growing almost as rapidly. Although there are a number of potential solutions being proposed by vendors of products ranging from chipsets to servers the most effective way to address power issues is during the initial planning process. Understanding the level of power that is required to fuel your data center operations up front is the best way to avoid a potential shortage in the future.

The “Green” movement has overwhelmed the national consciousness. No matter what the product or industry, companies are increasingly centering their messages on the societal benefit of being “green”. The data center industry has also embraced this emerging paradigm. The overarching issue, however, is to what depth will this new eco-friendly movement actually influence both the data center industry and its consumers.

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In conducting this survey we chose to focus on firms on the larger end of the spectrum. More specifically, we targeted companies with revenues in excess of $1 billion per year or more than 5,000 employees. Based on the number of responses received, the results of the survey have a confidence level of ±9.6%. Since the design and construction of data centers is a capital intensive endeavor we view these firms as the leaders in setting the overall direction of the industry. In order to best capture the opinions of the individuals that guide the decision making process in these organizations we further refined our universe to focus on senior level managers and above. As a result, these individuals make up nearly 70% of the survey’s respondents.

The need for data center space is booming. Due to the convergence of a diversity of factors including: synchronous applications growth, rising regulatory requirements, and enhanced storage demands, a high percentage of existing data centers can expand no further. The Gartner Group estimates that over 50% of existing data centers will be obsolete within the next five years. In order to ensure that your search for data center space ends with a facility that can support both your current and future requirements it is important to accurately determine your space and power requirements. All this seems like a simple endeavor, however if you are not correctly expressing your requirements you may wind up with a data center whose obsolescence begins shortly after your move-in date.

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The first, and perhaps most important, step in developing your new data center is quantifying your space and power requirements correctly. Only by viewing your needs in terms of kW of IT load can you be assured of accurately determining your requirements. By using this measure you factor in the entirety of your computing and support environment to ensure that your data center will support you current and future applications needs.