Now this is how to announce a new logo – just a little something our internal modelling team picked up and ran with one lunchtime!
A little different from their normal work modelling Excel’s datacentre and structured cabling designs, of course, but good to see those skills being put to such creative use.
Energy efficiency is at least somewhere on the agenda of most IT managers, thanks in part to the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) and in part to the relentless rise of energy prices over recent years.
But for all that the issue can generally be found on the agenda, it’s not always as near the top as it might be – and nor is it always clear how the IT manager can best respond.
To see exactly why it deserves a spot somewhere near the top of every IT manager’s priorities, it is worth recapping exactly what is at stake, and how datacentre efficiency in particular can be a hugely effectively part of the response.
The Challenge
CRC is a mandatory requirement for all companies purchasing more than 6,000 MWh of electricity through half-hourly meters. Depending on the price you pay for electricity, this roughly equates to an annual bill of £500,000.
Companies which qualify were required to register by September 2010, and since April they have had to purchase carbon allowances at £12 for every tonne of CO2 emitted. From 2013 the Government will cap the number of allowances available, auctioning a fixed quantity. At this point the price will become variable and can reasonably be expected to be higher than the current £12.
In addition to this legislative pressure, the cost of electricity looks set to continue rising by at least its recent average of 10% per year.
The Datacentre Contribution
The typical UK datacentre PUEs (Power Usage Effectiveness) is between 2.5 and 3.0, which means that more electricity is consumed in cooling than in powering the IT equipment. Plenty of case studies now exist to show that it is perfectly possible to bring the PUE of even legacy datacentres (with equipment more than two years old) to 1.8.
What impact would this have in practice?
Well, the majority of enterprise level corporations that Excel typically works with have multiple datacentres consuming 1MW to 5MW per site. The table below gives an indication of the potential cost savings that this reduction in PUE could deliver in legacy datacentres ranging from 1MW to 10MW load.
The level of these savings means that any expenditure on datacentre efficiency almost inevitably delivers a return on investment in less than 12 months. And alongside the clear financial and environmental gains are a host of associated benefits – increased reliability of business critical IT systems and increased capacity within the datacentre.
If you would like to talk to a datacentre efficiency specialist about pushing energy management and reduction further up the agenda at your company, call Excel today on 01708 865855 or email sales@excelit.com.
From ‘big data’ to the 12 atom bit, an assortment of stories that have caught our eye over recent weeks from the world of IT and infrastructure…
’Mobile, M2M & Sustainability’ Driving Data Centre Strategies in 2012
A survey of 949 data centre managers in Europe and the Middle East has suggested that datacentres are running out of space for data – with the ‘big data’ boom being driven by “increased interaction between consumers and brands via mobile devices, a surge in machine-to-machine (M2M) communications and organisations creating ever greater levels of information within their own processes.”
The survey, carried out by analyst firm Quocirca on behalf of Oracle, also emphasises the role that sustainability is playing in strategy, with almost two-thirds of data centre managers now having sight of the electricity bill that their datacentres generate (with the UK behind comparable countries such as the Nordics, Germany, Switzerland and the Benelux group of countries in this area).
Source: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/back-office-10012454/are-we-in-a-datacentre-building-bubble-10025215/
UK Data Centres ‘Won’t Cut Energy Use in 2012’
Sustainability might be high on the agenda, but the majority of data centres in the UK will fail to cut energy use in 2012, according to a survey by Data Centre World.
Although rising energy costs are supposed to be making data centres more energy-conscious, and energy taxes such as the CRC energy efficiency scheme are designed have the same effect, the survey reports that 76 percent of the UK’s data centres expect to use more energy , not less, in 2012.
Source: http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/uk-data-centres-wont-cut-energy-in-2012-53578
Datacentre sector generates $12.3bn in 2011 M&A deals
M&A activity in the datacentre sector generated more than USD12.3 billion in deal values globally in 2011. The most active market was the USA, followed by the UK and Australia.
IBM ‘opens path to 150TB hard drives’
IBM has announced that after five years of work, its researchers have been able to reduce from about one million to 12 the number of atoms required to create a bit of data.
The breakthrough may someday allow data storage hardware manufacturers to produce products with capacities that are orders of magnitude greater than today’s hard disk and flash drives.
Source: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/pc-components/3329778/ibm-smashes-moores-law-cuts-bit-size-12-atoms/
There’s more to the new look at Excel than meets the eye…
2011 was a pretty significant year for Excel. On a purely commercial level we won important new contracts across all areas of our business – for design and installation projects, for Business-As-Usual support in both the data centre and desktop arenas, and for our growing range of professional infrastructure services.
On a capability level, it was the year in which we began to roll out XactTM, a powerful new customer-designed and built MIS tool which we know is going to make a huge difference to our customers in the future. We were also able to welcome a number of high calibre employees at all levels, significantly boosting our resources in key areas.
But while all of this was going on, we were also carefully building a platform for future growth via a fundamental review of what we do, how we do it and how we communicate those things with our customers.
On the surface at least, the result of this is our new brand – a new logo, a new website at www.excelit.com, new business cards and so on. And of course staying up to date on all those things is important. But if you scratch that surface, you’ll find there’s a bit more to it than some new colours.
The Excel rebrand started not in the design studio but in direct discussions with a representative sample of our customer base. We wanted to know exactly what they thought of us – where we were succeeding, where we were not, and in what ways we could best support them in the future. It was the feedback from this that was to underpin a fundamental and extensive review and redevelopment of everything we do at Excel.
The result is XceedTM, an integrated service delivery model which captures a unique combination of systems, processes and tools designed to ensure Excel continues to support customers at the highest level on every project, every contract and every individual assignment.
XceedTM is a model which has been built around a business vision that emphasises the lifecycle role of IT infrastructure – an understanding that far from being stewards of a static installation, the IT managers we work with are responsible for IT environments which must continually evolve to support and indeed drive improved business performance.
That understanding ensured we put continuous improvement at the heart of XceedTM. In rigorously reviewing and, where necessary, revising all our processes, we have been working to ensure that innovation, evolution and continuous two-way communication are recognised as being every bit as important as the high-quality and consistent delivery for which Excel has established its reputation over the last 23 years.
And that is really the point about the new branding and all of the elements which sit alongside it. None of it – the XceedTM service delivery model, the XactTM software platform, the new marketing materials – replace for a moment the things which our customers have traditionally prized about us : the values of great service, expertise and above all the genuine, ‘human’ face which we hope continues to characterise the ‘Excel experience’. Instead, we believe that what we have done is to build on that successful formula, not so much with the new look or website, but with new ways of approaching our work and a suite of services and tools that have been carefully optimised to ensure that Excel is best placed to inject the energy, ideas and innovation that our customers’ require, and to keep doing so long into the future.
To see the new branding, or to read more about XceedTM, XactTM and our complete suite of IT infrastructure services, please visit www.excelit.com