Study Finds New Data Center Power Distribution Products To Fuel Growth
More than 80 percent of the $440 million dollar global revenues in 2011 from data-center power-distribution hardware came from transformer-based power distribution units, remote power panels, and static transfer switches. This is according to IMS Research (recently acquired by IHS) in their new study covering three-phase power distribution in data centers. However, the forecasts show new products, such as overhead busway and branch circuit monitoring, will become increasingly popular, commanding upwards of 30 percent of hardware sales by 2016.
The overhead busway market is currently being driven by new enterprise data centers. Retrofitting existing data centers with overhead busway is complex and expensive; however, new builds can immediately realize the benefits of lower installation costs, space savings, and flexibility in future expansion from using overhead busway. While this is a large growth opportunity, it is somewhat limited by the fact that new data center builds take an enormous amount of capital and tend to get pushed back in tough times.