European Union (EU) regulators wrapped up 2022 with new legislation introducing stricter requirements for data center operators. Four major regulations were passed (with strong majorities) in the European Parliament — most of these having been…
The European Commission (EC) has published a draft technical document on data center metrics and reporting obligations in support of the deployment of its Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) recast. The Directive is intended to encourage operators to…
Standard IT hardware was a boon for data centers: for almost two decades, mainstream servers have had relatively constant power and cooling requirements. This technical stability moored the planning and design of facilities (for both new builds and…
The COVID-19 pandemic — and the subsequent disruption to supply chains — demonstrated the data center industry’s reliance on interdependent global markets and the components they produce. Although the data center sector was just one of many…
A debate has been raging since cloud computing entered the mainstream: which is the cheaper venue for enterprise customers — cloud or on-premises data centers? This debate has proved futile for two reasons. First, the characteristics of any specific…
The past year (2022) has seen regulators in many countries develop or mandate requirements to report data centers’ operating information and environmental performance metrics. The first of these, the European Commission's (EC's) Energy Efficiency…
Google was an underdog when it launched its infrastructure cloud in 2013. Amazon had already made a name for itself as a disruptive technology provider, having launched Amazon Web Services (AWS) seven years prior. Microsoft, a household name in…
Cloud providers have experienced unprecedented growth over the past few years. CIOs the world over, often prompted by CFOs and CEOs, have been favoring the cloud over on-premises IT for new and major projects — with the result that the…
Recent geopolitical concerns, predictions of a looming recession, and continued supply chain difficulties are unlikely to dampen growth in digital bandwidth on private networks according to Equinix’s 2022 Global Interconnection Index (GXI). Global…
Attracting and retaining qualified data center staff has been a major industry challenge for years — and continues to cause substantial problems for operators worldwide. Uptime Institute’s 2022 Management and Operations Survey shows staffing and…
Uptime Institute’s outages database suggests data center fires are infrequent, and rarely have a significant impact on operations. Uptime has identified 14 publicly reported, high-profile data center outages caused by fire or fire suppression…
Many digital infrastructure operators have set themselves carbon-neutral or net-zero emissions goals: some large hyperscale operators claim net-zero emissions for their current operating year. Signatories to the Climate Neutral Data Center Pact, a…
In any market, fewer sellers or providers typically results in less choice for buyers. Where the number of sellers is very low this could, theoretically, lead to exploitation, through higher prices or lower-quality goods and services — with buyers…
Organizations are becoming more confident in using the cloud for mission-critical workloads — partly due to a perception of improved visibility into operational resiliency. But many users aren’t taking basic steps to ensure their mission-critical…
The data center industry and other large power-consuming industries continue to feel pressure from skyrocketing electricity prices. In Germany and France, wholesale energy prices this August increased six-fold compared to prices from 2021. The US…
Douglas Donnellan
Jay Dietrich
Jacqueline Davis
Max Smolaks
Daniel Bizo
Lenny Simon
Owen Rogers
Paul Carton