The availability of a cheap, reliable energy supply has been a benefit to the region’s data centre sector – the ability to provide high levels of uptime continuity at low operational expenditure is a clear advantage to any business. However, the naturally warm climate can push facility temperatures to the limit leading to more energy intensive cooling and negating seemingly enviable PUE statistics.

A problem caused by geographical location is hard to overcome however suitable technologies are available that may not overcome soaring temperatures, but can at least mitigate their impact on operational cost with some capital expenditure. Renewable and alternative forms of energy could prove a cheap supplement to conventionally generated power, thereby cutting back on the cost of cooling facilities and in the process reducing business’ carbon footprint.

The development of infrastructures such as Cloud Computing could also provide significant cost savings – when data is untethered to a physical location and still be accessed anytime anywhere, it makes sense to keep it somewhere cool.

Structured across three topic streams – Design, Build and Operate, Outsourcing Decisions and IT Optimisation – the DatacenterDynamics Doha conference will draw together IT professionals from across the region for an opportunity to network and discuss the latest developments in mission-critical IT infrastructure.

From site selection and construction through to cooling and power availability, and data centre automation, Design, Build, Operate sessions at DatacenterDynamics are must attend for any organisation intending to build a data centre or running existing facilities.

Not too long ago data centre facilities were designed for constant loads and steady availability, now they are dynamic. The transition from single tier, to multi tier to dynamic tier. Application, hardware and physical infrastructure are following this rule: from servers that power down, to distributed applications, even to variable frequency drive fans.

The focus now is on scalable and modular data centre design to reduce energy consumption. DatacenterDynamics  will demonstrate how to plan for and build data centres , taking into account all the component parts and their configuration.

Depending on the size of the enterprise, outsourcing is rarely an all or nothing proposition. The challenge for CIOs, CTOs and data centre management is to decide what it makes sense to outsource and what is so strategic that you must keep it in house, and how to optimise the management of owned data centre infrastructure with capabilities that are in the cloud, at a collocation provider, or with a managed services operation. 

Ultimately, the optimal solution for an in-house and outsourced data centre services mix is a function of likely utilisation rates of servers required to run applications, the capital cost of hardware and infrastructure, and the mission-critical nature of data storage, processing and dissemination. Any decision to outsource will require an analysis of the contractual obligations offered by third party providers in their service level agreements. 

Enterprises continually need to evaluate their data centre requirements and decide on how best to accommodate growth and the changing way in which business operates and uses IT. The efficiency of the facility is only half the equation – optimising all the systems that run within it is crucial, from processing to storage to network to application. 

Securing improved IT Optimisation, for example with virtualisation or a private cloud, can help data centre and IT management determine the need for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-service (PaaS), or Software-as-a-service (SaaS). IT Optimisation themed sessions will provide insight on how IT needs drive data centre strategy and how best to deliver the required infrastructure.