Data centre services boost expected
Data loads worldwide are constantly increasing, and this trend is set to persist. The uptake of data centre services, therefore, is forecast to be high during the next seven years, with intensifying competition between service providers.
New analysis from Frost & Sullivan finds that the market earned revenues of $353 million in 2010 and estimates this to reach $977 million in 2016. The research covers co-location, managed hosting and managed services across the financial services, government, ICT, media, retail, healthcare, mining, manufacturing, oil and gas and transport application industries.
“The lack of in-house capabilities is driving the demand for co-location and hosted services within the South African data centre market,” notes Frost & Sullivan’s ICT Business Unit Leader for Africa, Birgitta Cederstrom. “Enterprises lack the in-house capability to meet changing business requirements such as on-demand bandwidth, storage facilities, near-100-per-cent system uptime, high-speed internet and network security.”
South Africa, in general, lacks skilled manpower that can manage and maintain advanced data centre technology. In addition, highly skilled personnel charge a premium for their services, with some of the manpower being imported from overseas. As a result, companies are using third-party providers to manage specific data centre activities.
From real estate and construction, to power and cooling, creating data centres requires significant investment. Data centre providers have to deal with the increasing cost of real estate and power usage, which proves to be a challenge for growth within the market.
In 2010, property prices increased by 5 per cent. The power segment had also been impacted by electricity price hikes initiated by the South African energy and power company—Eskom. The company has implemented a strict pricing strategy in its bid to build new power stations and consumers are expected to pay approximately 31 per cent per year over the next five years.
“To combat the increasing costs of real-estate, service providers should consider building smart in order to accommodate what does happen, instead of what might happen,” advises Cederstrom. “Service providers should also focus on energy management and efficiency, re-thinking their power utilisation efficiencies (PUE) strategies.”
Managing a data centre actively can result in approximately 40.0 per cent, or more, in improved energy savings and importance is, therefore, placed on energy management. Organisations are going green, considering natural cooling, detailing energy management and centralising customers to reduce their loads.
A typical data centre requires a PUE between 2.5 and 2.8. For every 1kW of power, the PUE (2.8) is multiplied by the rate charged by Eskom. Service providers, therefore, are focused on decreasing the PUE to 1.5, thereby passing cost savings to the customer.
“Service providers should design data centres that can be built in stages so that it would have room to grow without paying for unnecessary space,” concludes Cederstrom. “In addition, instead of trying to project growth, it will be necessary to build in order to meet those projections ahead of time.”
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