Third-Party DataCentres are becoming increasingly attractive rather than Enterprise DataCentres, according to a recent Uptime Institute’s Survey

The Uptime Institute, a division of The 451 Group, recently has published the results of its third annual “Data Center Industry Survey” (2013). The survey was developed to collect data on an annual basis around Digital Infrastructure deployment trends, procurement plans, operations and management practices, and other topics that impact the mission-critical data center industry.

Note: You can get a free copy of 2013 report at http://uptimeinstitute.com/2013-survey-results and the 2012 one at http://uptimeinstitute.com/2012-survey-results.

 

This year, the survey  gathers responses  (during spring 2013) from 1,000 data center facilities operators, IT managers and senior executives from around the world (mainly from North America but with a growing number from Europe, Asia and Latin America) and most of them have responsibilities for more than one site. The survey covers different areas as DC budgets, Cloud Computing, Energy Efficiency and Green certifications, DCIM adoption, and so on.

 

It shows consolidation in tendency in most areas but also some surprising trends changes:

• The global average of the PUE numbers the respondents were seeing was reported to be at 1,65, a great reduction from the 1,98 reported in 2012 survey, or the one of 2.5 reported in 2011.
• The percentage of companies pursuing green data center certifications like US Green Building Council’s LEED program or Energy Star grew from 48% in 2012 to 58% in 2013.
• Furthermore, the survey found that Enterprise public cloud adoption rose from 10% in 2012 to 17% in 2013, however private cloud adoption decrease slightly: only 44 per cent deploying private clouds this year, compared with 49 per cent in 2012. According to survey “This seems to suggest that the companies who could make use of a private cloud platform have made the investment, and companies on the fence are either going to public cloud or walking away from the hype cycle” . It also said that large enterprises are almost twice as likely to implement public clouds than smaller enterprises.
• Prefab modular DC designs are on the slide: 53% of respondents said no interest from the last year 42%; and adoption is still around 8% as in the 2012 survey (however 2012 doubled 2011).
• Reported DCIM software adoption is high, a 38% among respondents, with the major driver being capacity planning. (Note: however in 2012, in spite of  enormous interest in and that a fair percentage were already using tools that could be described as DCIM,  there was no single concerted focus on what DCIM needed to be deployed).

However, probably, the new and most significant result found is that are the most significant DataCenter budget grow is occurring in the “third party” companies (77% of third-party data centre providers said they had received large, 10% or more, year-over-year budget increases this year, compared with just 47% of enterprise data centres), reflecting a shift in spending away from enterprise-owned data centres and toward outsourced options. According to Matt Stansberry, Uptime Institute director of content and publications, “This isn’t the end of the enterprise-owned data centre, but it should serve as a wakeup call. Going forward, enterprise data centre managers will need to be able to collect cost and performance data, and articulate their value to the business in order to compete with third-party offerings”.

 

Note: The Uptime Institute defines “third party” in this surveys as “companies that provide computing capacity as service in any form” (SaaS or other cloud computing services, multi-tenant collocation, or wholesale DC providers).