Annual meeting highlights data center innovations

The Uptime Institue Symposium 2011 was recently held in Santa Clara, California.

The meeting discussed the current trends of the data center market and how they reflected the proliferation of cloud computing.The Uptime Institute revealed the findings of its first-ever cloud computing study at the annual conference. The results indicated that 74 percent of businesses surveyed have deployed some form of cloud computing.

Furthermore, the data center industry was put on full display at the event. Topics, such as power usage efficiency, green initiatives and data center architectural design dominated most presentations throughout the four-day event.

"Data centers are attracting the attention of more CEOs and CFOs, not just for their energy use, but also because of the cost of facilities and the digital infrastructure - the entire system by which companies satisfy their computing needs," said Martin McCarthy, executive chairman of Uptime Institute.

Power usage for cloud enabled data centers has gotten more efficient, according to a study conducted at the conference. The survey found that "over 70 percent of the respondents measure power usage efficiency and report an average PUE between 1.6-1.99."

According to Digital Realty Trust the ideal PUE of any data center is 1, which means that most of a center's energy resources are devoted to IT processing demands. Therefore, the results shown at symposium reflect an energy-conscious industry.