Over the course of the past decade, organizations have begun to rely significantly more on information technology (IT) systems to support business-critical applications. Organizations such as banks, telecommunications companies, internet service providers, and cloud/co-location facilities rely heavily on the availability of their data centers as many of their customers are paying a premium for access to a variety of IT applications. 

With respect to disaster planning and backup power requirements, Hurricane Katrina was a real wakeup call. Prior to Katrina, most hospitals and emergency medical facilities thought their trusty backup generators would provide all the long-term power protection they needed in an emergency. 

Designers of information technologies (IT) facilities today are challenged to keep up with several varieties of environments, some of which are mission critical and others that are not. 

Is putting end-users first a business philosophy or a design philosophy, or both? Saying that end-users come first is easy, but system designers and equipment suppliers find that putting end-users first can be hard to do.

Will our growing reliance on all varieties of digital information coupled with the recent extraordinary natural disasters, deliberate assaults on IT infrastructure, and the increased obsolescence of the electric grid lead to the perfect storm on steroids?

Much has been said about the energy efficiency of higher three-phase alternating current (ac) voltages as well as direct current (dc) solutions for data centers.