UK businesses throw valuable IT budget out of the data centre window

London, UK 13th December 2011: Sentrum (www.sentrum.com), a specialist in data centre solutions, today released findings from an independent research report which clearly shows that UK businesses are struggling to effectively plan their future data centre requirements. The companies interviewed cited that their plans stay current, on average, for 2 years and 11 months before they need revising yet, for some 17%, specifications were out of date within 12 months or less. In contrast, just 19% were confident that plans remained current for 37 months or more, whilst 5% boasted that plans never need to be revised.

The research entitled Data Centre Deliberations also found that, in parallel to the need for improved planning, over-specification for current business needs was also an area of concern. Collectively, 85% of companies confessed that their current data centres are over-specified, with 14% going as far as saying that this was to a considerable level.

Amongst the companies with over-specified data centres, 59% admitted that the situation costs them money with the average figure cited being a staggering 205,948 per annum, per company. In fact this could also be considerably higher, as a significant 26% of the respondents were not sure how much this situation added to the annual IT spend for their company.

Ensuring a scalable solution and adding long term value should be high on the data centre operators business agenda but being able to apply specialist knowledge to that, in order to advise and guide businesses to develop a robust data centre plan, is what really separates the market leaders from the rest, said Franek Sodzawiczny, CDO and Co-Founder at Sentrum. I have no doubt that businesses will continue to closely monitor IT spend in 2012 and I expect to see a continued pressure on IT managers to reduce operating costs. The data centre strategy will of course be a part of the business that is focused on. Im not shocked to learn that there are a number of highly over-specified data centres out there, but I believe that hearing about the associated costs will send a shiver down some spines.

The report, the fifth in the Sentrum research series, also highlighted that 94% of respondents admitted that they tend to over purchase space, taking more than is needed due to concerns about availability in the future. In fact, 29% of the companies questioned always take this approach to buying data centre space whilst 65% feel that this sometimes applies to them.

It is still surprisingly common to hear of panic buying in the data centre market as a lot of operators actively encourage clients to lease extra space to allow for rapid growth rather than working with them closely to understand what their business need realistically is in the short-to-mid term, concluded Sodzawiczny.