Forrester Report Shows Data Centre Investments in Australia Expected to Increase

In a recent Forrester Consulting report, it was revealed that more than three quarters of Australian organisations are planning to increase their investments in datacentre’s over the next 12 months, with big data being cited as the main reason.

The report, which was commissioned by Digital Realty Trust, found that 76% of organisations in the country expect to increase spending on data center facilities over the next 12 months, with 59% looking to increase spending by 5-10% and 17% of respondents expecting to increase spending by more than 10%.

The key drivers for the expansion and investment in data centres ranged from big data (51%) and virtualisation (39%) to business continuity (37%).

“As consumers continue to become more connected and trends such as mobile computing, Big Data analytics and the Internet of Things (IoT) gain momentum, copious amounts of data are generated which need to be analysed and processed in real-time, highlighting that the role of the data centre has never been so important,” commented Kris Kumar, senior vice president and regional head, Asia Pacific at Digital Realty.

“Organisations are realising the true business benefits this data holds and this is reflective in Australian organisations’ intentions to increase spending on data centre facilities.”

The survey also found that network connectivity options, carrier availability, and carrier density were regarded as top considerations when making decisions about new data centre facility investments – 73% of respondents declared it as “very important”. Other “very important” considerations included access to cloud, managed service providers or other partners (61%) and the cost of energy at the data centre location (59%).

Additional key findings from the survey include:

CIOs continue to have the strongest influence on data centre spend in Australia with over half (52 per cent) of respondents identifying the CIO or most senior IT decision maker as influencing the decision, closely followed by the CEO (46 per cent) and the IT VP/manager/director (46 per cent).
Over half (52 per cent) of Australian organisations surveyed have between one to four data centres.
Exactly half of respondents (50 per cent) cited the need to expand space and number of cabinets/racks as the main reason their data centre facilities are running out of capacity.