Big data will drive data centre spending increase

Digital Realty has released Australia-specific findings following its annual commissioned survey of Asia-Pacific data centre trends conducted by Forrester Consulting.

According to the survey, 76% of Australian organisations expect to increase spending on data centre facilities over the next 12 months, with 59% of respondents expecting to increase spending by 5-10% and 17% expecting to increase spending by more than 10%.

Big data was cited as the key driver of data centre growth in Australia by over half (51%), followed by virtualisation (39%) and business continuity (37%).

“As consumers continue to become more connected and trends such as mobile computing, big data analytics and the Internet of Things (IoT) gain momentum, copious amounts of data are generated which need to be analysed and processed in real time, highlighting that the role of the data centre has never been so important,” commented Kris Kumar, senior vice president and regional head, Asia Pacific at Digital Realty.

“Organisations are realising the true business benefits this data holds and this is reflective in Australian organisations’ intentions to increase spending on data centre facilities.”

Network connectivity options, carrier availability and carrier density were also identified by the survey as top considerations when making decisions about new data centre facility investments, with 73% of respondents attributing this as very important.

Other very important considerations included access to cloud, managed service providers or other partners (61%) and the cost of energy at the data centre location (59%).

Other findings include:

• CIOs have the biggest influence on data centre spend with 52% of respondents identifying the CIO or most senior IT decision-maker as influencing the decision, followed by the CEO (46%) and the IT VP/manager/director (46%).
• 52% of Australian organisations surveyed have between one and four data centres.
• 50% of respondents cited the need to expand space and number of cabinets/racks as the main reason their data centre facilities are running out of capacity.

Image courtesy Bob Mical under CC