NEW YORK - Wednesday, 21. September 2022
The findings
highlight the growing, industry-wide need to achieve meaningful
efficiency gains, evolve sustainability reporting practices, prevent
costly outages and more
(BUSINESS WIRE) -- Uptime Institute
today announced the release of its 12th Annual Global Data Center
Survey. The findings show an industry that is growing, dynamic and
increasingly resilient, but still working to address increasing pressure
for sustainability progress and reporting, continuing staffing
shortages, supply chain delays, costly outages and other complex
challenges.
“The global digital infrastructure sector continues
to enjoy strong growth and expansion, despite the many obstacles
operators are facing today,” said Andy Lawrence, executive director of
research, Uptime Institute Intelligence. “We’ve seen the industry invest
in increased resiliency and reliability, but there’s still work to be
done when it comes to improving efficiency, environmental
sustainability, outage prevention, staffing pipelines and more.”
Uptime’s
annual Global Data Center Survey is the largest and most comprehensive
in the digital infrastructure industry. It provides detailed insights
into the digital critical infrastructure landscape and a sense of its
future trajectory. Key findings from the 2022 report include:
Many data center operators are unprepared for mounting sustainability
requirements and regulations – Most respondents say they report on
overall data center power use and PUE, but many still are not tracking
critical environmental metrics. Although 63% of operators believe
authorities in their region will require them to publicly report
environmental data in the next five years, just 37% collect and report
carbon emissions data (a slight increase over 33% in 2021) and only 39%
currently report their water use (a 12% drop compared to 2021). New
laws, standards, and requirements will force operators to address these
gaps and establish more stringent sustainability tracking and reporting
practices in the coming years.
PUE progress is in stasis for
now and future efficiency gains must focus on IT power – The average
annual power usage effectiveness (PUE) reported in 2022 was 1.55. This
represents a slight improvement over the 2021 average of 1.57, which is
consistent with the trend of marginal PUE gains Uptime has observed
annually since 2014. Going forward, achieving substantial data center
efficiency improvements will require a new focus on IT efficiency, along
with metrics to track and report progress.
More operators
are investing to bolster data center resiliency – Data center owners and
operators are making significant investments in the resiliency of their
physical infrastructure, with about 40% of respondents reporting
increased redundancy levels at their primary data centers in the past
three to five years. Power and cooling systems have received similar
attention, with a third of operators upgrading either or both.
Outages are becoming more expensive and are still far too frequent –
The share of all outages costing operators over $1 million has reached
25%, a significant increase from 15% in 2021. In 2022, 60% of operators
reported experiencing an outage (regardless of severity) in the past
three years — down from 69% in 2021 and 78% in 2020. Although the data
indicates a trend toward improved outage rates, the frequency of outages
is still much too high and with more than two-thirds now costing
operators upwards of $100,000, the consequences are getting worse.
Operators’ confidence in public cloud is on the rise, despite ongoing
outage risks – As the perception of improved visibility into cloud
operational resiliency grows, organizations are more likely to trust the
cloud for mission-critical workloads. In 2022, just 63% of operators
are not placing mission-critical workloads into a public cloud, a
substantial drop from almost 75% in 2019. That trust might be misplaced,
given that more than one-third of respondents report that public cloud
availability zone outages (which are relativity common) would cause
significant performance issues.
Data center equipment vendors
optimistic despite demand pressures and lingering supply chain problems
– Three-quarters of vendors project year-over-year revenue growth in
2022 despite reporting dampened revenues due to persistent COVID-induced
supply chain issues. Nearly half of respondents involved with data
center construction have suffered significant delays (or other events)
in their supply chains, while one-third have experienced moderate
issues.
Problems attracting and retaining qualified staff are
worsening – Over half (53%) of data center operators report difficulty
finding qualified employees in 2022 — up from 47% in 2021 and 38% in
2018. And 42% of respondents report issues with staff being hired away
(in most cases to data center competitors) – a massive increase over
just 17% in 2018, which demonstrates the growing challenge of employee
retention throughout the sector.
Learn More: Uptime’s 2022 Global
Data Center Survey also includes findings on industry attitudes toward
nuclear energy, server refresh rates, rack density trends and much more.
Download the complete report here, and register for the webinar
covering its key trends and takeaways on September 28th at 11:00 a.m.
ET.
About the Survey: Uptime conducts its annual Global Data
Center Survey online and by email. This year’s study took place in H1
2022, and includes responses from approximately 800 data center owners
and operators responsible for managing infrastructure at the world’s
largest IT organizations. It also includes insights from 700 data center
suppliers, designers, and advisors worldwide.
About Uptime Institute
Uptime
Institute is the Global Digital Infrastructure Authority. For over 25
years, the company has established industry-leading benchmarks for data
center performance, resilience, sustainability, and efficiency, which
provide customers assurance that their digital infrastructure can
perform across a wide array of operating conditions at a level
consistent with their business needs. Uptime’s Tier Standard is the IT
industry’s most trusted and adopted global standard for the design,
construction, and operation of data centers – the backbone of the
digital economy. With its Tier Standard and Certifications, Management
& Operations reviews, SCIRA-FSI financial sector risk assessment,
broad range of additional risk and performance assessments, Intelligence
research services, and accredited training courses completed by over
10,000 data center professionals, Uptime has helped thousands of
companies in over 100 countries to optimize critical IT assets while
managing costs, resources, and efficiency.
Uptime Institute is
headquartered in New York, NY, with offices in Seattle, London, Sao
Paulo, Dubai, Singapore, and Taipei. For more information, please visit
www.uptimeinstitute.com.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220920005231/en/
Permalink
https://www.aetoswire.com/en/news/2109202227174
Contacts
Brenda South, Uptime Institute
bsouth@uptimeinstitute.com