While the headlines scream about the economy’s downward spiral, it
seems there’s a bright spot, at least if you’re a data center manager.
More than half of data center managers surveyed by AFCOM, the leading
professional organization for data center management professionals,
said their budgets would remain intact.
This is great news for solution providers whose customers are
looking to integrate new, efficient technology focused on storing more
data more securely and with a decreased impact on the environment, says
Jill Eckhaus, CEO of AFCOM.
“Back in November, 46.9 percent of data centers were seeing an
impact on their budgets,” Eckhaus says. But instead of seeing gloom and
doom in those numbers, Eckhaus believes there’s a silver lining.
“What that means to us is that over 50 percent of respondents
weren’t seeing an impact on their budgets – which means the majority of
corporations realize that the data center is the lifeblood of their
organizations, and that they need to focus on keeping their data
flowing, secure and optimized,” Eckhaus says.
Of those data centers that were impacted by budget cuts, Eckhaus
says the survey data showed that the average budget cut was 15.2
percent. Again, she’s optimistic about the meaning of this number.
“Really, 15 percent is a relatively small number when you consider
the percentages of the work force laid off, projects cut and budgets
frozen or slashed in other industries, and even in other IT areas,” she
says.
She adds that respondents reported that 37.2 percent of those budget
cuts would affect equipment purchases. Many respondents agreed that
their budgets would shift to priorities such as virtualization and
disaster recovery to ensure that data was delivered and stored
efficiently and securely without requiring expensive infrastructure
upgrades or additions.
“We saw an incredible increase in the number of respondents moving
to virtualization,” Eckhaus says. “Two years ago, we began educating
members on virtualization, but they weren’t ready for it,” she says.
In the survey conducted November 2008, 86.2 percent of respondents
plan to increase their reliance on virtualization to cut down on
infrastructure expenses, Eckhaus says, an indication that this trend
will definitely increase in popularity and adoption rates will soar.
And as the push to "go green" gets stronger, many organizations are
seeing both the environmental and business benefits of designing and
maintaining an energy-efficient data center, she says.
“There’s so much focus today on energy usage, space concerns and
cost-cutting that these members really need to do things like
consolidate servers, turn off servers they aren’t using and expand or
build new facilities based on LEED certifications,” she says. In many
cases, these projects don’t have to cost a lot to have a huge impact on
an organization's spending.
No single topic is as controversial in the data center space as the
introduction of cloud computing. It promises energy savings,
streamlined data center management, higher efficiency and requires
fewer personnel to manage. But many data center managers remain highly
skeptical of the technology, Echkaus says, with 77.3 percent of
managers of 133 large-scale data centers saying they have no plans to
increase their usage of the cloud.
Eckhaus believes that moving applications and data to the cloud will
be a slow process, and that adoption will follow the pattern set by
virtualization technology.
“Right now, there’s not one clear definition of what cloud computing
is, and that can be unnerving,” she says. “There’s a lot more education
that has to happen for our members to understand what it is and what
they’re getting into before they take the leap,” she says.
One of the main focus areas for AFCOM will be education of its
members, Eckhaus says, which by touting the benefits of the technology
will help ease members’ fears. She says a main concern is the loss of
control over data, data security and information management.
“Any technology that can be seen as taking away internal control and
placing new restrictions and policies on this data is going to be met
with a lot of skepticism from these guys, so it’s going to have to be a
slow and steady process,” she says.
While cloud computing remains controversial, disaster recovery
solutions are the polar opposite, says Eckhaus. Organizations are
learning from the lessons of past disasters to better prepare for
earthquakes, hurricanes and fires by beefing up their investments in
disaster recovery solutions.
“This is an area that members say is easy to ignore, but they’ve
been really pushing for these technologies, she says. “They know that
if the data goes down they can stand to lose thousands of dollars each
hour,” she says.
And these disaster recovery solutions don’t just take data security
and recovery times into account, says Eckhaus. Data center managers
understand that there are considerations outside of this like, how to
get people to a site that’s been affected, how to protect them against
further harm and injury and to ensure they can get their jobs done
safely and securely.
As the importance of the data center to companies’ livelihood
increases, AFCOM continues to grow. Currently, the organization has
about 4,500 members representing almost 4,000 data centers within
companies across nearly any market imaginable.
“We’ve been growing by leaps and bounds over the last couple years,
which is indicative of the increased profile of data centers,” she
says. “This really puts extra pressure on data center managers to keep
up their education, to network with and learn from their peers to be
better prepared for whatever may come,” Eckhaus says.
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Computer Networking 
