Computer Weekly Reports Failing Data Centres
A recent article in Computer Weekly caught my eye. It reported the growing problems we have been reporting in this blog for some now - how weak the UK electrical infrastructure is and its lack of ability to cope with an ever increasing demand for power.
The ‘Information Age’ has been upon us for some time but I doubt that few people realise the investments being made in data centres to meet our growing expectations for ‘on-demand’ information. Imagine you are a company like Google - your long term plans (which for search engines may only be 3-5 years ahead) must include the development of new data centres to store and process data. But where do you site these ? Now low-cost labour is not your prerequisite but cost of electricity and sustainability of its supply.
The article also highlights that power failures were themselves the fastest growing source of business disruption in the UK last year, with 26% of organisations instigating their business recovery plans due to power failures - up from 7% in 2005. In the UK, as in the rest of Europe the problems of energy supply and management are going to simply worsen because we cannot make the necessary investments.
In the Third World survival depends upon access to water. Will the same hold true for electricity in developed nations in the years to come ?
