Mythbusting Data Center marketing trends

ABB expert Dave Sterlace presented a session on data center marketing trends at Automation & Power World 2013 in Orlando, Florida.

Some highlights from Dave:

  • 2% of the world’s global energy is consumed by data centers, a carbon equivalent greater than the entire airline industry.
  • The EPA estimates it will take five years to double power usage.
  • Data centers consume 15 to 30 times more energy than a typical commercial office building.
  • Electrical construction costs can take up to 70% of the overall construction costs of data centers.
  • Currently the largest data center in the world is located in Chicago.  It is a 100MW facility comprising over 1.1 million square feet.  It’s power consumption is second only to O’Hare airport in the Chicago area.
  • The average cost of data center downtime is about $350,000 per hour.
  • The total loss due to downtime last year was estimated at $426 billion in the US alone.
  • IBM’s data center revenue in 2008 was over $40 billion

Mr. Sterlace addressed the question of whether tier levels are still relevant

  • Tier Levels were established by the Uptime Institute to define power system topology, higher the tier level, the higher the resiliency.
  • Only 2 Tier IV accredited Uptime Institute data centers exist in North America
  • Some info (ref 7×24 Fall 2010 conf) shows that dual redundancy leads to DECREASED availability
  • Many customers are using tiered “zones” within their data center.
  • Verdict:  Probably not as relevant as they once were
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About the author

Scott Bornkessel

I'm the Director of Online Marketing for ABB North America, and country website manager for the U.S. I help ABB businesses in the United States, Canada, and Mexico leverage our online presence in web, social, and email to improve lead generation and customer service. I've been with ABB since 2010, and previously worked at IBM, Navteq, and Cisco Systems.
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