– Melanie Davy, research analyst for Info-Tech Research Group (www.infotech.com), says:

Reducing energy costs will continue to be a focus in 2010 for data centers. However, Info-Tech customers are focusing on finer levels of metering and instrumentation. Typically Info-Tech sees Data Centers monitoring power consumption ‘at the wall’ and not at the IT infrastructure level.

In 2010 Info-Tech customers will be trying to achieve a more granular level of instrumentation be implemented using products such as Sentilla’s Energy Manager. . There is a cycle of power load in the Data Center – it is very rare that we see a steady state through daily, weekly or monthly cycles.

Many organizations discount the option of co-location when assessing data center cost savings. While it can be a risky venture for some, in many cases outsourcing the data center presents significant operating cost savings as power, standby power, cooling, fire suppression, and security are all taken on by the vendor while the organization pays a monthly fee (ranging on the level of service they have engaged in and discounting required upgrades in the organization’s data center). However, the decision to outsource the data center must be carefully examined as it is a long term commitment.