RECAP | ROUNDTABLE | The Growing Importance of Non-Critical Spaces

According to participants at an Uptime Institute roundtable, non-critical spaces have never been a more important part of IT services. This, they say, is because mission-critical IT is changing to deliver services in new ways, and more rapidly. These changes are causing more IT assets to be located in mixed-use facilities.

Uptime Institute’s Rich Van Loo helped a diverse group of participants work through a lengthy list of issues. These include shared facilities, competition for vacant space (even raised floor), budget concerns, and inappropriate uses of adjoining spaces.

The solutions, participants agreed, could be difficult to achieve, in one case requiring executive board action to approve a policy that would remove paper from a space adjoining the data center. On a positive note, board support meant that the policies and procedures could be enforced.

Many of the participants shared other concerns. Concerns about provide comfort cooling in mixed-spaces meant that IT capacity and room to grow could be reduced. In another case, a real estate group moved a call center into a raised floor space. Soon, the workers moved in additional plug loads such as coffeemakers and refrigerators. This also affected PUEs.

Roundtable participants, led by Van Loo, did notice that mixed-use was not always a negative. Positive attention and more awareness of business objectives tended to put IT in a better light, more as a partner in company-wide initiatives. In addition, it was recognized that the mixed-use strategies sometimes benefited other departments or the whole company in ways that concerned IT. Of course, IT, it was noted, existed to promote the success of the enterprise so this tradeoff is often appropriate.