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Data centres - the next big challenges
Data centres are now integral to our economies and to national
security, but just how ready for full-on professionalism is
thedata-centres sector?
'How many data centres does government currently own itself? How
many data centres are actually owned by system integrators
andservice providers to government?'
These questions were posed to the UK Cabinet Office back in May
2011 by the Public Administration Select Committee
investigatingplanned public-sector data-centre consolidation in
advance of the formulation of plans for the controversial G-Cloud
initiative, part of ageneral inquiry into 'The effective use of IT
and good governance'. The Cabinet Office replied that a survey
commissioned by the CIOCouncil during June 2010 counted 220 data
centres across central government. The Council brings together CIOs
from across thepublic sector to address IT issues, and improve
public service delivery. It adds: 'Outside of Central Government,
the police have atleast 88 data centres, while the estimate for
local government and the wider public sector is in excess of 600
data centres.' However,
who actually owns each of these facilities is as yet unclear.
'Information is not currently held which distinguishes ownership
for thesedata centres. Confirmation of ownership is planned for
early stages of the data-centre consolidation initiative.'
Such admissions are revealing for anyone seeking to understand
more about the dynamics driving expansion in the
data-centressector, and for a range of reasons. The rate at which
the world has come to rely on data centres has outpaced general
understandingof their role for many organisations that rely on
them.
Greening of data centres
Data centres are rallying points of the green ICT movement
central to establishing best practice for the nation's
carbonmanagement. Government and business are realising that a good
deal of economic stability, not to mention critical
nationalinfrastructure, depends on privately-owned data centre
facilities, and realisation has highlighted knowledge gaps about
nationaldata-centre 'estates'.
The need to control heat dissipation, cooling and ventilation
inside data centres, for instance, has produced some of the
mostinnovative methods for internal environmental controls to be
found in any industry. Last May's Data Centres Europe conference
inNice, for instance, showcased a good deal of leading-edge
research and development work from vendors and academics
addressingthis problem.
Yet despite all this activity the pioneering R&D, and
society's dependency there are as yet no regulatory bodies or
tradeassociations directly governing data centre operations, and
nobody knows for sure how many people are employed in this
increasinglyimportant profession. Until recently there has been
little consensus over the baseline skills and competences data
centre staff requireto develop professionally, and no formal
accreditation for data centre managers, apart from the standard
security clearances. Changeinitiatives, such as the programme to
establish a standard data centre professionalism model by the Data
Centre Council of the ICTtrade association Intellect UK in
partnership with the Institution of Engineering and Technology
(IET), are taking a lead towardaddressing this situation (see
box-out, 'Toward Professional Registration for data centre
expertise').The headcount question mayseem academic: does it really
matter if the number of techies working in data centres is unknown,
so long as there seems to beenough of them to keep systems
going?
It's hard, though, to think of another sector of such importance
where so little is known about the profession responsible for
runningthings.
There are reasons for this. In respect to in-house enterprise
data-centre functions, it's often hard to ascertain where
traditional IT staffroles end and data-centre roles start; in many
cases there will be much overlap. In the independent data-centre
realm the picture isperhaps more clear-cut, although according to
Sid Barnes, executive director at recruiter Computer People, data
centre specialistsnow represent something of an 'elite corps'
within the IT general practice.
'Data centre engineers typically have a broader range of skills
than conventional IT professionals,' Barnes says. 'They can do
serverand storage management, security software and firewalls,
configure routers, administer management applications, and so on.
Theymight also know about data-centre architecture and design,
power management, and have experience of overseeing mergers
andacquisitions.'
When recruiting data-centre managers, Barnes adds, experience is
the key prerequisite plus personal security clearance that
comesfrom working for an employer with List X accreditation. As a
result of their esteemed status, data-centre staff can typically
command10-15 per cent premium on average IT salary scales, with
salaries starting at 44k going up to 100k+ for seasoned
individuals.
Mapping the data centre universe
New builds, and expansion of existing facilities, is in part
ensuring that demand remains high. No independently-audited
register of UKcolocation data centres exists (although website Data
Centre Map suggests there are at least 144).Again, because data
centres varyso much in size and capacity, arriving at a headcount
figure can be only an'educated estimate.
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'We guess that there are around 10,000 people employed in
approximately 250 commercial data centres, (colocation,
hosting,managed services, wholesale),' says Alex Rabbetts, managing
director of data centre design and build consultancy
MigrationSolutions. His figure is drawn from assumptive
calculations based on a proportion of the known number of UK data
centres (250),factored against the number of registered UK
business, and the assumption that at least 50 per cent of these
will have some datacentre operations supporting corporate
applications. 'It's a bit of a finger in the air figure,' Rabbetts
acknowledges, 'but it is a figure.'
Ten-thousand UK data-centre professionals sounds on the high
side, but not wildly improbable when compared against
anothermetric: attendance figures for industry events like Data
Centre World, which for 2011 claimed 2,541 visitors. That somewhere
around25 per cent of a given profession should attend a trade show
is another reasonable assumption; Infosecurity Europe 2011 had
10,482visitors, out of 1.5 million people employed in UK IT, as
reckoned by Sector Skills Council E-Skills UK. However, in any
assessmentof data-centre employment it is important to remember
that it includes not just IT specialists, but engineers responsible
forCRAC/CRAH (Computer Room Air Conditioners/Computer Room Air
Handlers) equipment, cabling and power engineers, and (atstandalone
premises) facilities management colleagues.
Now in addition to everything else, the data centres sector
provides employment for some 10,000 people, and provide livelihoods
formillions more. So what are the driving issues that this massive
responsibility present to the data centres profession?E&Tput
thisquestion to a quartet of data centre industry insiders: their
contrasting views are featured in the box below. *
Further information
www.broad-group.com/datacentreconvergence.com/www.apc.com/site/apc/index.cfm?ISOCountryCode=gbwww.cw.com/www.equinix.com/www.node4.co.uk/www.computerpeople.co.uk/Pages/default.aspxwww.migrationsolutions.com/www.sentry42.com/
http://www.broad-group.com/http://datacentreconvergence.com/http://www.apc.com/site/apc/index.cfm?ISOCountryCode=gbhttp://www.cw.com/http://www.equinix.com/http://www.node4.co.uk/http://www.computerpeople.co.uk/Pages/default.aspxhttp://www.migrationsolutions.com/http://www.sentry42.com/http://www.sentry42.com/http://www.migrationsolutions.com/http://www.computerpeople.co.uk/Pages/default.aspxhttp://www.node4.co.uk/http://www.equinix.com/http://www.cw.com/http://www.apc.com/site/apc/index.cfm?ISOCountryCode=gbhttp://datacentreconvergence.com/http://www.broad-group.com/
