DATA CENTRE PREDICTIONS
Education sector respondents placed energy efficiency in their top three factors affecting server purchasing decisions .
• Almost a quarter of Arts / Culture organisations – a higher proportion than any other sector – said that energy efficiency is a less important factor in their server purchasing decisions than it was 12 months ago .
Morten Mjels , ASUS UK & Ireland Country Product Manager for Servers , said : “ In the survey , we also asked respondents to identify the top three factors in their server purchasing decisions , and it would have been perfectly possible for any respondent to say , ‘ performance , energy efficiency , warranty , and these are equally important ’, or ‘ price , energy efficiency , performance , and these are equally important ’. But they didn ’ t : the data seemed to indicate that purchasers think there ’ s a trade-off between these attributes – forcing IT managers and procurement departments to choose based on which attribute is most important to their organisation .
“ Frankly : this is a misperception : all major manufacturers are focused on improving server energy efficiency , while performance world records are broken all the time , by the same servers ,” Mjels continued . “ It ’ s a story the industry needs to tell more : you can have both energy-efficiency and performance . As a sustainability leader , ASUS would like to see stronger consideration of energy efficiency in the purchase process , because we don ’ t want to see the worst predictions for energy consumption by IT equipment coming true .”
Last year , ASUS committed to increasing the energy efficiency of its products – including servers – to a level that is on average 30 % higher than the specifications of Energy Star , the strictest environmental standard .
While the UK is no longer part of the European Union , the issue of data centre energy consumption has attracted political attention in recent years . In February 2020 , the European Commission declared that ‘ the ICT sector also needs to undergo [ a ] green transformation . The environmental footprint of the sector is significant , estimated at 5 – 9 % of the world ’ s total electricity use and more than 2 % of all emissions . Data centres and telecommunications will need to become more energy efficient , reuse waste energy and use more renewable energy sources . They can and should become climate neutral by 2030 ’.
“ The IT industry is rapidly transforming , with a key focus now on sustainability and energy efficiency in all aspects of operations ,” said Jon Clark , Commercial Director , Carbon-Z . “ This is proving challenging to areas such as AI , ML or VR that require more computing power and generate significantly more heat . Traditional air-cooled data centres are struggling to reduce the extra heat generated by these new demands , which is where the sustainability issue resides as more power , water and cooling are being consumed .
“ This is why it is great to see ASUS increase its focus on server energy efficiency and run these in new liquid cooling technologies addressing the challenge of performance and energy efficiency and setting measurable targets . The survey results presented are an essential step in creating a better understanding and increasing perception to end-users on the performance for efficiency .”
“ There should be no doubt the IT industry is a force for good ,” said Vlad Galabov , Director of Cloud and Data Center Research at Omdia . “ Apart from saving us time and keeping us connected with loved ones , it helps increase global productivity , enabling us to do more with less , thus reducing our carbon footprint . However , there is a need for an industry-wide conversation on , not only the use of clean energy , which dominates the sustainability narrative , but also energy efficiency . It is very encouraging to see ASUS increase its focus on server energy efficiency and set measurable targets . The survey results presented here are also an important step in tackling the misconception that endusers have to trade off performance for efficiency and vice versa .” �
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