A new survey of more than 2,000 professionals in Asia has identified availability and energy efficiency as the top two challenges the data centre industry faces in the region.

Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson (NYSE:EMR) and the global leader in enabling Business-Critical Continuity^™, has published the results of a 2,000-data centre user survey from its recently held Energy Logic Symposium seminars in Asia.

The survey - which polled delegates from 15 countries across southeast Asia, India and Australia between April and July this year - found availability (29 per cent) and energy efficiency (24 per cent) to be the top two issues among respondents. Other issues included heat density (19 per cent), data centre consolidation (15 per cent) and power consumption (14 per cent).

"Over the past four years we’ve seen the gradual emergence of energy efficiency as an issue for data centre managers in the region, but only this year did the issue break into the top five areas of concern in a big way,” says Russell Perry, Emerson’s Marketing Director for Asia, who was responsible for the Symposium series. “Interestingly the survey also shows us that power densities in Asia are following closely those found today in the U.S. Where in the past American trends were not seen as a benchmark for Asia, we can now draw much closer parallels between the regions, which has planning implications for all of us in addressing the issue at a regional scale.”

Market confusion leads to inaction

While the survey shows that 30 per cent of respondents have already implemented some form of energy strategy in their businesses, 57 per cent had no plans in place to address the issue. “This response is symptomatic of an audience that has been barraged by conflicting information from the main industry players,” says Perry. “This was the single-most important problem we set out to rectify with the Energy Logic Symposiums, because confusion leads to inaction. By bringing industry leaders and decision makers together we’ve sought to find a cohesive understanding of the issues and identify appropriate solutions.” Survey respondents were primarily made up of end-users (23 per cent), of which the majority were decision-making managers (51 per cent) and C-level executives (23 per cent). Other major groups include system integrators (15 per cent), IT resellers (13 per cent), and facility managers and consulting engineers (nine per cent each).

More than 50 per cent of respondents indicated that energy efficiency was the issue in which they were most interested prior to attending the events.

Finding holistic solutions

Another interesting aspect of the survey results shows that heat densities in the data centre are on the rise. A majority 59 per cent of respondents indicated they manage between one and 30 computer racks in their business, almost a third of which (30 per cent) indicated densities in excess of eight kilowatts per rack.

Despite increasing densities, however, cooling is not considered the ‘silver bullet’ fix for the majority of respondents, with 65 per cent pointing to IT equipment efficiencies and 56 per cent citing virtualisation well ahead of other opportunities.