Cost containment, business continuity/availability and capacity issues are the most important drivers of strategic change in Australian data centres in 2011, according to a recent survey by Gartner, Inc. While green IT and sustainability ranked lower down the list, Gartner analysts believe there is a high probability that many Australian CIOs would link these with cost containment.

“Australian companies are focusing on optimizing the cost structure of the data center with the aim of supporting business growth in the near future,” said Phillip Sargeant, research vice president at Gartner. “IT managers are evaluating ways to save money from routine operations and use the savings for running transformational IT projects with significant business impact.”

One of the biggest challenges faced by Australian data centers that is forcing change is data growth, with many Australian data centers running out of capacity. 59 percent of survey respondents ranked data growth as the leading infrastructure challenge, followed by system performance and scalability (37 percent), and network congestion and connectivity architecture (36 percent). While all the top infrastructure challenges impact cost to some degree, data growth is particularly associated with increased costs relative to hardware, software, associated maintenance, administration and services.