IDC Virtualization Forum West: Keynote by Matthew Eastwood

This article is part of a series of guest posts by investor, Open Source pioneer and the creator of the Concurrent Versions System Brian Berliner. The original posts, recapping much of what was said at the IDC Virtualization Forum West in San Francisco, have also been published on Brian’s blog.

I attended the IDC Virtualization Forum West 2008 conference today. It was kicked off by Matthew Eastwood of IDC. He shared some of the IDC analysis of the virtualization markets.

Some takeaways that I found interesting:

• Worldwide IT Spending on Servers + Power + Cooling currently at about $55 Billion annually.
• Data centers continue to grow with new server purchases annually (and relatively fewer servers retired annually, so absolute growth appears to never end).
• Server Management & Admin costs are rising at 4x the rate of new server acquisition growth, while Power & Cooling is growing at 8x the rate.
• Number of Rack “U” used annually increases 25x to 15.4 Million servers – this is 365,000 racks representing $15 Billion, with an additional $30 Billion going to Power & Cooling requirements.
• IDC conducted a survey where they asked IT customers about their interest in “Green Data Centers”. Result, with n=191, was that 37% would Favor A Green Supplier, 51% thought Green would Help With Compliance, and 81% felt that Green Strategies would help to reduce OPEX.

So, lots of discussion about the need for Green data centers, and the huge amount of Power and Cooling costs that directly affect operating expense. A dynamic and adaptable data center can provide that. In fact, that’s what Cassatt’s Active Power Management and Active Response products do.

Go save the planet. Or, at least increase your corporation’s earnings. That’s important too.

Disclosure: I am a Founder and shareholder of Cassatt.

[Original post can be found here]