Uptake of virtual desktop infrastructure continues to be slow. Of the 430 business technology professionals who responded to our recent survey, only 16% have VDI in production, while the vast majority (61%) are in testing, pilot, or evaluation phases. It seems to hold that whenever a new technology is going to directly affect how end users function, its uptake will be slower than for technology that’s used only by IT teams. But VDI adoption seems slow even when factoring in that consideration.

According to our survey, adoption should be a no-brainer. For those companies that already have VDI in production, more than 90% say their IT teams are satisfied or very satisfied with the technology, while 73% say their users are satisfied or very satisfied and another 18% say users are neutral. That’s a pretty strong endorsement for any new technology, so what’s slowing VDI adoption?

More of the Information Week article from Art Wittmann

Coy Stine is Director of Data Center Services for Bluestone Energy Services, a national design/build engineering firm focused on the cost effective reduction of energy use.

In these uncertain financial times, reducing data center operating costs has become a top corporate priority. Unfortunately, limited budgets often preclude efficiency initiatives that have high initial costs. An increasingly popular alternative approach involves leveraging technologies that improve the energy efficiency of existing equipment while minimizing up-front outlays and data-center disruption. Regardless of the methodology, considerations relating to safety, reliability and data-center uptime must be faced. Finding the right solution depends on a careful examination of financial and environmental goals, data center composition and layout, time horizon and budget.

What are the best opportunities for cost-effective retrofits and energy-usage reduction in data centers? Upgrading electrical equipment is one option. Replacing UPS and PDU equipment provides two immediate benefits: less electrical loss, and less waste heat to remove. Efficiency gains depend on the age of the equipment being replaced, but a 5% gain in UPS efficiency can lead to a 10%-60% reduction in annual operational costs. These items can give attractive returns, but relatively high capital costs, possible IT downtime and daunting electrical work may make approval difficult.

More of the Data Center Knowledge article from Coy Stine

Everything looks like a nail, a truism that ASHRAE (The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers) has just demonstrated in its advice to data center operators on how to achieve greater cooling efficiency in the data center (see ASHRAE Standard 90.1). In ASHRAE’s opinion, the way to achieve data center cooling efficiency is through the use of various economizer techniques (air-side, water-side …) to reduce the amount of energy used by the cooling plant. Unfortunately, this is a rather narrow view of the problem, focused on the stuff that ASHRAE members do best, i.e. air-conditioning and chilled water plants. The ASHRAE standard has now drawn a universal thumbs down from some of the largest data center operators (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Digital Realty Trust, DuPont Fabros Technology and Nokia) who issued a joint statement urging ASHRAE to re-think it’s position.

more of the Burton Group blog post