Intelligent CIO APAC Issue 32 | Page 83

FINAL WORD
Blueprinting data center designs to achieve commonality across facilities has thus become a key strategy for ‘ doing more with less ’. While many see it as a critical step towards developing and implementing global design standards , operators must still comply with local and national building codes , financial accounting laws and security regulations . Many data center managers are also streamlining their operations with well-defined , purpose-built workflows and operational management tools to further reduce OPEX while still protecting uptime . To this end , some are installing cross-domain , site-level monitoring and management platforms to automate as many tasks as possible , thereby easing workloads and reducing the chances of human error , which caused major outages over the last three years at 40 % of organizations surveyed by the Uptime Institute .
Tougher internal and external sustainability mandates
Data centers face mounting pressure from governments , clients and stockholders to become more sustainable and energy efficient . A sustainability strategy is no longer simply a ‘ nice-to-have ’; in the future , it may determine whether an operator succeeds or fails . With financial firms at either end of the transaction – as both clients and providers of capital – operators will face an additional hurdle of expectations when seeking to fund future projects , particularly as pressure increases on private equity and real estate investors to make greener investments . Further , even clients shopping for data center colocation service providers are now examining ESG profiles to account for upstream Scope 2 and 3 carbon footprint .
Data centers consume about 3 % of the world ’ s electricity – more than most countries – and produce 2 % of global carbon emissions – about the same as the entire airline industry .
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