Special focus: data centres

A new data centre for the UK’s Co-operative Bank is the first to deploy a 'green' uninterruptable power supply (UPS) that uses compressed air to generate the initial replacement electricity.

Data centre services provider Equinix has opened its 50th International Business Exchange (IBX) data centre in Slough, UK. The expansion of the second phase of the company’s Platform Equinix offering, LD5 IBX adds 4,000 square metres of customer space and capacity for 1,400 cabinet equivalents.

Telecity has bought Dublin-based Data Electronics for £87.6m, boosting data-centre capacity to 4MW.

Governance is playing an increasingly important part of information security within enterprises.

IT leaders are under pressure to deliver commercial growth but admit they lack the skills and resources to deliver on those demands.

Recruitment agency CV Screen has reported that a 'significant rise' in the number of registered IT vacancies occurred during 2010.

The final instalment of Cisco's Connected World Report suggests that IT departments continue to adopt new technologies but struggle to maintain security and data governance policies.

IBM is targeting data centre sustainability with containerised data centres that save on air-conditioning costs by using ambient air for cooling, plus analytical software for better planning.

The EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres must become a mandatory scheme if it is to have impact on reducing energy consumption of European data centres.

IBM technologists have patented a natural disaster warning system which would use analytics based on data from hard disk accelerometers to provide post-event assessments of seismic events to help improve rescue operations.

Enterprise IT spending in the EMEA region will rebound in 2011 and reach $795.2 bn, a 1.3 per cent increase from 2010, analyst Gartner has predicted.

The EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres on Energy Efficiency is failing to secure 'a significant level of support in the UK', bespoke data centre specialist is Sentrum claiming.

The University of Hertfordshire has been named the first European university to comply with the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres.

The London data centre market is set for ‘renewed growth’.

Consultants are finding a bigger role in data centre design; yet only 3 per cent of UK businesses survey wholly accept their recommendations – the rest admitted that they had ignored all or some of the advice they commissioned.

Volcanic eruptions in Iceland have cast a shadow over the country’s image as a secure and eco-efficient data centre location, according to UK-based IT services company ControlCircle. Its CEO has claimed that Eyjafjallajökull’s belchings will have a lasting impact on its reputation due to the combined hazards to flight bans and ash fallout.

Server and storage solutions vendor Shoden Data Systems has become the latest UK signatory to the European Code of Conduct on Data Centres Energy Efficiency, the EU proposals that aim to provide guidelines for organisations to reduce data centres’ environmental and economic impact.

Hewlett Packard (HP) is having another go at wresting control of the many data centre heartlands still ruled by IBM’s zSeries, the only descendant of the traditional single vendor mainframes of the past.

Only one-in-eight data centre managers cite a desire to 'go Green' as the key reason for implementing energy-saving solutions, a survey of registered attendees at Data Centres World has revealed, falling from one-in-three this time in 2008.

The latest 'Western Europe: Datacenter Investment & Infrastructure Trends 2007-9' report has revealed even higher levels of concern about power consumption and the cooling of higher density configurations.

The Data Centre Price Tracker survey of 14 European countries reveals that average per-rack pricing rose by 8.5 per cent during 2008.

Data centre managers were caught between two conflicting goals in 2008 – more demanding user expectations, and higher levels of performance, came while demands for reduced costs remain their primary objective, according to findings from Symantec’s 2008 ‘State of the Data Centre’ report.

Carrier-neutral data centre provider Interxion is expanding the capacity of its London City data centre for the second time this year (2008), in order to meet growing customer demand for high power density infrastructure, the company claims.

What’s claimed as the first data centre partially powered directly by tidal current energy is being planned for a Scottish location by Singapore-based Atlantis Resources Corporation.

Enterprise IT users are being confused by vendors over-focusing on green issues as the industry changes its focus to environmentally friendly IT, a report by Gartner says.

Telecity Group has announced the opening of a second data centre in Milan, to meet increased demand and overall use in the company’s existing facility in one of Italy’s largest cities.

What is claimed as the first industry-standard tool to provide a rack-to-rivets ‘healthcheck’ of the environmental and economic efficiency of data centres has been launched by UK firm Migration Solutions.

Telehouse Europe is adding an extra 1,200m² of data centre space. The expansion follows an earlier announcement by Telehouse that it is to invest an £80m in developing its London Docklands data centre facilities. The move challenges claims that there is an effective block on data centre expansion and power supply in London, the company says.