More than $30 billion DC capital is sitting idle

MUMBAI, INDIA: A new study has found that 30 percent of servers in the data center are sitting comatose, in this case servers that have not delivered information or computing services in six months or more.

The findings of study jointly conducted by the Anthesis Group and Jonathan Koomey, Research Fellow, Standord University, underscore the problem of data center provisioning and management, resulting in more than $30 billion in data center capital sitting idle.

These findings imply that there are about 30 percent or 10 million comatose servers worldwide–including standalone servers and host servers in virtual environments.

The findings support previous research performed by the Uptime Institute, which also found that around 30 percent of servers are unused. The 10 million estimated comatose servers translates into at least $30 billion in data center capital sitting idle globally assuming an average server cost of $3,000, while ignoring infrastructure capital costs as well as operating costs, the researchers noted.

“Far too many businesses have massive information technology (IT) infrastructure inefficiencies of which they are not even aware,” said Jon Taylor, Partner, Anthesis Group. “These preliminary findings support the idea that ongoing measurement and management of a business’s IT infrastructure is needed to optimize performance, energy use, and return-on-investment.”

Koomey, a Researcher, Consultant, and Lecturer on the energy and environmental impacts of technology, said, “Removing idle servers would result in gigawatt-scale reductions in global IT load, the displaced power use from which could then support new IT loads that actually deliver business value. That’s a result that everyone should cheer.”