BALTIMORE, MD - Emerson Network Power tackled the issue of the changing face of the data center and also released new industry survey results during its AdaptiveXchange 2007 customer event in November. In his keynote address, Bob Bauer, group vice president, Emerson, discussed The Dynamic Data Center - Mastering Constant, Unpredictable Change. Bauer noted that the trend toward centralization and consolidation has made the main corporate data center the hub of global information management and corporate communications networks. At the same time, smaller and mid-sized data centers are experiencing many of the same challenges regarding availability and flexibility as large companies, but must deal with those issues with more limited resources. He also addressed the impact virtualization is having on infrastructure design and management.

The accelerated pace of change in the data center was echoed in new results from Emerson’s fall 2007 industry survey conducted by the Data Center Users’ Group (DCUG), a group of influential data center, IT and facility managers formed by Emerson Network Power. The survey covered a variety of data center topics, including power management, precision cooling, energy efficiency, technology implementation and consolidation. Results confirmed that density is a major IT concern, with the majority of respondents citing either heat density or power density as the biggest issue they are facing. The other top concerns, in order of importance, were energy efficiency, availability, space constraints, adequate monitoring/data center management capabilities, and technology changes. The survey provided some insight into why density has become such an issue as average rack densities rose to 8.8 kW (a 46 percent increase from the spring 2006 survey results) and the maximum density in any given rack increased to 14.8 kW (a 37 percent rise compared to the spring 2006 survey).