The majority of European organisations have no firm plans for initiating greener data centres, according to a report released yesterday.

The findings come at a time when IBM is touting the power-saving benefits of its entire server range, including the System i, and IT managers are facing shortages of power supplies. The report by storage management specialist ONStor was based on interviews with 440 firms across the region over the summer.

Its findings indicated that 48% of European companies are predicting that they will outgrow their existing data centre. 58% stated that they had already run out of space, power and cooling capacity in the last few months with little of no warning. Only 36% of organisations questioned had a green initiative currently in place despite current trends and concerns, while 29% said they were talking about it. However, a further 29% cited that there had been no discussions to date.

When asked what percentage of cost savings would be enough of an incentive to “go green”, 12% cited less than 5%, 24% stated between 5 and 10% while 33% stated between 10 and 20%. 73% of the sample stated that buying more efficient hardware and software would be integral to any corporate green data centre policy. A further 55% stated that storage consolidation would be a central element of their green policy and 70% pinpointed virtualisation technology.

Seamus Quinn