Within the UK specifically, the degree to which organisations have outsourced data centre space requirements has fluctuated greatly over the last 5 years. In particular, the sharp rise in 2009 was quickly followed by a fall in 2010. Since 2010 however the sector has been gradually recovering and, today, outsourcing levels are almost back to where they were during the 2009 peak.
“The UK statistics clearly show a solid understanding of the business benefits associated with outsourcing as 78% of respondents stated that they currently outsource all, or part of, their data centre space,” said Franek Sodzawiczny, Chief Development Officer and Co-Founder at Sentrum. “The US market is hardly far behind however at 65% and whilst 35% of respondents from that country are not outsourcing any data centre space requirements at this time, 17% do have plans to do so in the future. This is very promising and shows that the outsourcing market is continuing to move in the right direction.”
These figures in the UK are perhaps reflected in the fact that 95% of IT managers also said that they now feel more confident about being able to decide on certain issues when it comes to new data centre projects, compared to 2008. They were however pipped to the post by their US counterparts as 98% of US IT managers stated that they felt more confident about making data centre decisions now, than 5 years ago.
The combined country statistics break down further as follows:
72% cited that they feel that their confidence has improved the most on deciding on space requirements.
This is followed by increased confidence around decisions on power requirements (65%) and energy efficiencies, such as improved PUE (64%).
61% felt more confident overall about decisions being made on the location of a new data centre.
51% of IT decision makers felt more confident about deciding on the tier level / resilience that they needed for their new data centre.
This latest study, entitled “Creating Data Centre Confidence”, was commissioned by Sentrum and details quantitative research with IT professionals in large organisations across the UK and US. It is the sixth report in the series. For this survey, a total of 214 interviews were collected with senior IT professionals across a wide variety of industry sectors within organisations in the UK and US with 250 or more employees. All respondents confirmed that they were an IT professional with responsibility for the company’s data centres from either an operational and/or a strategic perspective. They also confirmed their level of seniority: from CIO and director level to senior manager.