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The power footprint of Western Europe’s data centres is expected to grow, says IDC

The amount of power consumed by data centres across Western Europe grew by 13.4% from 2006 to 2007, according to new research conducted by market researcher IDC.

In 2007, 40.7 Terawatt-hours (TWh) were consumed by data centres, up from 35.9 TWh in 2006.

According to the report’s author, IDC analyst Giorgio Nebuloni, the cause of this power hike was an increase in the use of cheap commodity servers combined with an increase in the average power requirement of a server.

And despite Green IT initiatives from both user organisations and hardware vendors, the power consumption of Western Europe’s data centres will increase in 2008, the report found, albeit at a slower rate. This year’s consumption figure was estimated at 42 TWh.

Nebuloni estimated that the cost of the 40.7 TWh consumed by the data centres was roughly €4.4 billion, around 40% of the total data centre hardware spend in the region.

Further reading

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