Results from Oracle’s second Next Generation Data Centre Index show that data centres in the Middle East are geared for business growth, in contrast to the rest of EMEA where there seems to be a tendency for data centres to be under more strain now than when the results of the first survey were released 10 months ago.
In the first survey the Middle East lagged behind other regions and countries surveyed; this year, its ranking has gone up from bottom position (4.41) to mid-table (5.27) – a 20% increase.
“The companies surveyed in the Middle East demonstrate the ability to apply resource to optimise workload, homogeneity, consolidation and server utilization,” said Marc Heger, senior director for hardware for MEA at Oracle. “Results show organisations in other EMEA countries are struggling to keep up and are sometimes falling behind with the need for more capacity and better management.”
The results of the survey reveal general overall improvement in systems management and virtualisation. Those with less than 10% of their IT estate virtualised is significantly down from 52% to 16%, and other levels have improved across the board. There was also significant improvement in sustainability planning and knowledge has improved on data centre energy usage. In the first survey, 61% didn’t see or didn’t know their energy usage; this is down to 42% in this year’s survey.
The survey also noted progress on the consolidation front. Those doing ‘nothing’ about it is down from 37% to 16%. The impact of data centre consolidation is also being felt more widely; organisations saying they have seen ‘no impact’ are down from 42% to 16%, and those using less space has gone up from 17% to 29%.
The survey also found that organisations now had better visibility of future workload requirements. Use of straight line prediction methods was up from 15% to 30% and adhoc reaction to demands from the business is down from 33% to 11%.
Visibility of workload performance is also much improved with reaction to user complains down from 40% to 22%; use of real-world performance testing has increased from 9% to 28% and there is closer business/IT alignment, leading to general improvements across the board.
Organisations have also reported that failure of IT systems are better handled, with instances of impact on business from failures being down from 13% to 3%.
“Wrestling with big data is going to be the single biggest IT challenge businesses face over the next two years,” said Luigi Freguia, senior vice president, Oracle Systems EMEA. “By the end of that period they will either have got it right or they will be very seriously adrift from their own business and the threats and opportunities posed by big data.”
