The most important thing a data center operator must do is meet the needs of the business and its customers. Availability and uptime must be 100%, with services performing as required to deliver a high quality experience for both customers and internal users. The second most important thing is whether it does that efficiently – and by efficiently we mean by using as little energy and as cost-effectively as possible. However, you can’t do the second if it impacts the first. Unfortunately, the way many data centers are currently operated today, this happens all too often. Inefficient data centers introduce more risk and are typically more expensive to operate due to the lack of visibility.

Does this inefficiency matter? It sure does! Data centers already consume around 1% of the electricity used worldwide, and it’s a number that’s on the increase. Even the most conservative projections have data centers growing at 4.5% annually over the next five years. Some projections show over 20% annual growth, with key reasons being our greater dependence on online services as well as the global introduction of 5G. We can’t live without our devices; we’re using them more and more every day, and it takes greater bandwidth to ensure we experience improved performance each time we upgrade.

To support these workloads, around 35% of data center energy is taken up by cooling, and it’s estimated that around 150 billion kilowatt hours per year are being wasted through inefficiencies of cooling and airflow management in data centers. For operators, this translates to wasting over $18 billion a year. These are big numbers, and they are not sustainable from either a cost or a carbon perspective.

Read more on this topic at ekkosense.com.

For more on how artificial intelligence and machine learning can provide visibility for data center operators, check out our recent webinar titled, How Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Can Optimize Data Center Performance.