Electronic data storage centres in Dubai are increasingly becoming conscious about their environmental impact and are planning to take steps to go green.
According to research conducted by DataCentre Dynamics, Dubai – an arm of the global umbrella organisation of 24/7 IT services industries – the top concern of today's data centres is how to address environmental responsibility. The green issue has superseded other traditional concerns such as regulation, power supply and costs, as well as IT problems.
Data centres are facilities that house computer servers and information storage and back-up devices, such as hard drives. They are back-end operations connected to both individual users as well as large corporations.
Speaking to Emirates Business, Vipin Sharma, vice-president of sales for Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa at power back-up and protection devices manufacturer Tripp Lite, said: "There is now a trend where people are becoming more environmentally conscious and that trend has already reached the corporate level."
Sharma said data centres are using so much power that, apart from affecting the financial bottom line, also damaging the environment. Citing an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report, he said IT data centres consume up to 15 to 20 times more energy per square foot than a typical office building.
"Based on this figure, this would equate to about the consumption of an entire residential area in Dubai," he said adding: "I have been given conflicting estimates of the total amount of (data centre) floor space in Dubai, ranging from 60,000 square feet, which would indicate about half-a-dozen small to medium-sized data centres, to several times than that. Power consumption within their operations is estimated at around 60 kW per sq ft."
Currently, most countries in the Gulf are reeling from a gas shortage, even though they sit on massive hydrocarbon fields. Gas is the primary fuel for power generation and desalination plants in the region. With new mega projects constantly being announced – all of them demanding electricity and power supply – the region is expected to feel the power pinch in the next few years.
Data centres are expected to be one of the sectors greatly affected, as they are very dependent on power. A data centre generally includes redundant or backup power supplies, redundant data communications connections, air conditioning and fire suppression equipment, and special security devices.
A data centre can occupy one room of a building, one or more floors, or an entire building. Most of the equipment is in the form of servers mounted in 19-inch rack cabinets, which are usually placed in single rows forming corridors between them. This allows people access to the front and rear of each cabinet. Servers differ greatly in size – from 1U servers to large freestanding storage silos, which occupy much floor space. Some equipment, such as mainframe computers and storage devices, are often as big as the racks themselves, and are placed alongside them.
"There is no accepted standard for what constitutes a data centre. Some people refer to a simple server room with just a couple of racks as their data centre.
"We generally recognise four sizes: small, medium, large and very large. The small ones consist of 300 to 500 servers and occupy approximately 10,000sq ft, while the medium ones have 500 to 1,500 servers and occupy 20,000sq ft," Sharma said.
"Those that occupy about 40,000 sq ft and have 1,500 to 3,000 servers are large. The very large centres have more than 25,000 servers and are housed in about 100,000 sq ft of area."
Not only do data centres consume much space and power, they also leave a substantial amount of carbon footprint. Worldwide, computers account for approximately two per cent of global CO2 output, thereby making the IT sector on par with the airline industry.
"Every megawatt of energy consumed in a data centre has approximately the same carbon footprint as 1,226 cars," Sharma said.
In a modern society where health, safety and environment (HSE) as well as corporate social responsibility (CSR) have become key ingredients of building brand equity, chief information officers have become as critical leaders as CEOs and CFOs.
Further, the aim to be green has been elevated to governmental and international levels, where non-conformity would mean penalties, bad reputation and slower business growth.
Data centres are at the heart of most discussions when it comes to balancing corporate needs, energy demand and the environment. Investors, shareholders and governments want to see a Green IT action plan rolled out for all industries.
This is nowhere more apparent than in Europe, especially the United Kingdom, where the government is introducing legal bindings on CO2 emissions aiming for a 60 per cent cut by 2050. Parts of North America will follow suit shortly.
According to experts from Hyder Consulting Middle East, the UAE is the world's second highest producer per capita of carbon emissions. It is estimated that buildings contribute approximately 40 per cent of global carbon emissions, with the UAE coming second highest in the per capita calculations.
Although the Kyoto protocol is not binding on the UAE, several initiatives have been signed to reduce carbon emissions under the Clean Development Mechanism. Masdar – the environmental arm of Abu Dhabi's Mubadala – has signed a number of agreements towards this aim. Doha Bank is planning to put up the region's first carbon exchange. Although the fund-raising has been delayed, the bank's chief executive Raghavan Seetharaman earlier told Emirates Business that the plan remains on course.
Under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the United Nations started managing the Clean Development Mechanism, which encourages developing nations to cut production of greenhouse gases by earning carbon credits that can be bought and traded by companies in industrialised nations. The global emissions trading market more than doubled to $30 billion last year, according to Point Carbon, a Norway-based research firm.
The Chicago Climate Exchange said last year it would start offering certified emission reduction futures contracts, or CERs, because they are becoming the international currency in global markets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
EcoSecurities, an Irish carbon credit trading firm, opened its Middle East office in Dubai last year and has helped state-run Qatar Petroleum register its Al Shaheen field project under the Clean Development Mechanism. In June 2007, the company said it will join the state-run Dubai Multi-Commodities Centre business park to help turn Dubai into a regional centre for carbon emissions trading.
Mubadala, an investment company owned by the Abu Dhabi Government, also said its Masdar unit plans to earn the UAE's first tradable carbon credits by helping Dubai Aluminium cut production of pollutants known as perfluorocarbons.
The current trends indicate that the only way to do business is to go green. And its means the same for data centres as well. It is therefore necessary for the enterprise to keep pace with IT innovation, to remain competitive and efficient.
According to a recent report by American IT security services company Crossbeam Systems, "keeping up" translates into adding more servers, larger data storages, increased security, faster connectivity and mobility improvements that all have a direct impact on the data centre and more importantly, the energy it consumes.
"IT services are simply outstripping energy supply and consequently placing an added burden on the environment," the Crossbeam's report added.
The multinational IT research and advisory firm Gartner, forecasts that in 2008, 50 per cent of data centres will have insufficient power and cooling to meet business demands.
Crossbeam cited another study which said 63 per cent of enterprises have already run out of space, power and cooling capacity.
In addition to socially responsible behaviour of reducing energy consumption inside the data centre, every IT organisation today is concerned with the capital cost of building additional data centres due to current power and cooling shortfalls. Growth has been restricted due to the fact that there is a squeeze in available power for data centres.
The increasing electricity costs – which in Dubai and Sharjah take the form of slab tariffs – have also been hitting the bottom line.
"Naturally, while the data centre is a critical component, CIOs must consider the energy and carbon footprint of the whole organisation and make recommendations on where technology can enable the most impactful savings," American firm Crossbeam's report said.
"Being part of the Green IT solution is about being able to help transform the security ecosystem of the data centre and, in doing so, empower businesses with a platform to become change-ready for whatever lies ahead," it said.