Information technology systems are an essential and strategic component of every enterprise and every building. For those who design and manage Enterprise Information and Communication Technology systems, the guiding principle has always been - Better, Faster, Cheaper. Give clients better performing systems to achieve results faster and reduce costs. Today a new element has to be added to that mandate - environmental responsibility.

According to IDC, energy and cooling expenses will grow eight times faster than the amount of money spent on purchasing new servers through 2010, warns APC-MGE, a global leader in power, cooling, and management solutions. Predictions show that changes in power supply and cooling in data centers will have a serious impact on users, suppliers of data center solutions and energy sources. In fast growing regions such as the GCC, power is in short supply. This calls for technology solutions that address this challenge fast.

The majority of existing data centers (and some of the new ones being implemented now) are not suitable for operating high-density systems. Data center suppliers and operators must change their approach to apply the new technologies. "The presence of higher power in data centers will directly affect all users.

IDC predicts that in 2010 the amount spent on cooling and powering the existing installed base of servers will be over 70% of what is spent on purchasing new servers," warns Christian Bertrand, ME Business Development & Support Director at APC-MGE. "Building completely new data centers might be cheaper than reorganizing conventionally-built ones, even in the medium-term. We could say that the data center design methodology of yesterday, the conventional server technologies and today's requirements together will form the greatest IT challenge of tomorrow," added Bertrand.

Information systems provide an increasingly ubiquitous network within the companies, and offer services in new fields. Using this network, companies can provide faster and better services to their customers, including RFID and VoIP solutions. The emerging and broadening information services also induce changes in data centers; they require more servers and processors, higher network and storage capacity. Due to these changes, IT professionals face the following challenges:

Speed and Agility: The world of business that requires increasingly faster response relies more and more on information systems. The imperfection of an information system must not hold back the launch of a new service or project. In addition, this must be provided in a solution where investment grows with revenue: "Pay as You Grow". Impact on the infrastructure: modular and scalable solutions are needed for power supply and cooling.

Footprint, rental costs, and expansion possibilities: Placing more equipment requires more floor space, requiring constant expansion of data centers. The costs associated with occupied areas (for example rental costs) limit expansion possibilities, particularly in downtowns, and in several cases server rooms cannot be enlarged due to the lack of free space in the building. Area limitations motivate IT professionals for dynamic growth, namely they have to provide higher performance by server consolidation and high-density applications using the same floor space. This solution can be implemented by using 1U and blade servers, or virtualization technologies. Impact on the infrastructure: higher power consumption, higher power density, and overheating problems when using conventional cooling methods.

Security requirements, availability: The increasing amount of stored data, threats entering through e-mails, fear from terrorism and higher availability requirements demand more secure systems with higher availability. This trend is also fuelled by different requirements, regulations and internal policies (Basel 2, SOX, BCP[1], DRP[2], etc.) The fastest possible restoration after an unplanned downtime is becoming an even more important factor not only for information systems, but also for server infrastructure: instead of MTBF[3], MTTR[4] is becoming the first priority. In case of IT devices, this change drives the emergence of modular systems and virtualization. Impact on the infrastructure: emergence of easily reparable modular solutions, increased demand for comprehensively manageable equipment.

Cost reduction: This is a general and ever-increasing requirement in all fields. Companies try to reduce their costs by cutting back on the expenditure related to employment (reducing maintenance and operating requirements) and electricity, and reducing floor space and amount of physical hardware devices. The energy costs can be significantly decreased by applying virtualization technologies on several fields (for example, remotely accessible monitoring and management systems, server consolidation, cooling power). Impact on the infrastructure: High-density devices require unconventional cooling, and infrastructure devices have to be well manageable.

Infrastructure challenges: High-density servers can generate high heat load on a much smaller place, compared to equipment manufactured a few years ago. In addition, virtualization technologies increase the average capacity utilization 5 or 6-fold. In an environment like this, cooling problems arise much earlier than power supply problems. The challenges of high-density cooling include separation of cool and warm air, increasing the efficiency of cooling, ensuring heat removal and possibilities for comprehensive manageability and predictive troubleshooting.

"Legacy systems work fine for brute-force cooling the entire room, but skyrocketing energy costs make them fiscally irresponsible and their fundamentally oversized design makes them incapable of meeting today's high-density challenges. Even worse, power and cooling waste may actually prevent you from purchasing much-needed new IT equipment. Simple problem - simple solution: Cut your power and cooling costs and use the savings to buy the IT equipment you need," concludes Bertrand.