Soaring energy costs 'hit IT industry'

News Article - Wednesday, May 07, 2008

filed under: Technology

The soaring price of electricity in Britain is having a negative effect on the IT sector, a new report states.

Research conducted by Tariff Consultancy indicates that rising energy bills and a shortage of attractive data centre space are in increasing costs for IT managers.

Britain now has some of the highest energy bills in Europe and the Tariff quarterly Data Centre Price Tracker reveals that the average per rack data centre price rose in Europe during April 2008 to almost 800 euros per rack per month, while prices in the UK reached almost 1,000 euros per rack per month.

Margrit Sessions, managing director of Tariff Consultancy, said: "Industrial electricity prices are the clear and present danger to the data centre user and the IT community… Suppliers are taking advantage of rising space utilisation to raise their prices for new space, and boost their rate of return."

Carbon accounting software can help businesses to assess their IT energy costs and make cutbacks where possible to generate savings and reduce the impact of their operations on the environment.

Data centre customers are becoming increasingly concerned about green issues and are attracted to sites that can demonstrate that they are committed to reducing their impact on the environment or are carbon neutral.

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