DC Hardware Spend To Reach $99 Bn In 2011

Worldwide datacentre hardware spending is projected to reach $98.9 billion in 2011, up 12.7 percent from 2010 spending of $87.8 billion, according to Gartner, Inc. Datacentre hardware spending is forecast to total $106.4 billion in 2012, and surpass $126.2 billion in 2015.

Datacentre hardware spending includes servers, storage and enterprise datacentre networking equipment.

"Worldwide datacentre hardware spending will finally reach and surpass 2008 levels. Growth in emerging regions — particularly Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRIC countries) — is balanced by continued weakness relative to pre-downturn levels in Japan and Western Europe. Storage is the main driver for growth. Although only a quarter of datacentre hardware spending is on storage, almost half of the growth in spending will be from the storage market," said Jon Hardcastle, research director at Gartner.

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The very largest size category of datacentres (which is datacentres with more than 500 racks of equipment) will increase its share of spending from 20 percent in 2010 to 26 percent in 2015, driven by the cloud and the shift from internal datacentre provision to external.

"Traditional in-house enterprise datacentres are under attack from three sides. Firstly, virtualisation technologies are helping companies to utilise their infrastructure more effectively, inhibiting overall system growth. Secondly, datacentres are getting more efficient, leading to higher system deployment densities and inhibiting demand for floor space. Thirdly, the move to consolidated third-party datacentres is reducing the overall number of midsize datacentres. Meanwhile, the largest datacentre class is, of course, benefitting from the rise of cloud computing," Hardcastle said.

In 2010, 2 percent of datacentres contained 52 percent of total datacentre floorspace and accounted for 63 percent of datacentre hardware spending. In 2015, 2 percent of datacentres will contain 60 percent of datacentre floorspace and account for 71 percent of datacentre hardware spending.