By Sandra Gittlen, Newsfactor.com, 04/11/07

Many companies' data center responsibilities are broken out piecemeal, but experts say that companies embracing New Data Center technologies, such as blade servers, grid computing and virtualization, will succeed by consolidating the management of all critical functions into a single role. Using these advanced technologies begs for someone capable of bringing an integrated, holistic approach to data center architecture and design, says Johna Till Johnson, Network World columnist and co-founder of Nemertes Research.

For a data center to be secure, its architect must factor in facilities design and architecture, Johnson says. Likewise, to create a sturdy server and storage architecture, the architect must plan for manageability and operations. By placing all such responsibilities under the purview of a single person, the company gains strength in long-range planning and short-range execution. On the other hand, Johnson says in her "New Data Center Strategies" newsletter, companies that don't risk failure.

Increasingly, companies are anointing a data center architect to justify the costs in hot-button budget issues, such as space allocation, says Andreas Antonopoulos, senior partner at Nemertes. "There might be a situation where the data center appears to be only half-full, but the empty space is misleading because of the power and cooling requirements of technologies such as blade servers," Antonopoulos says.

"We've gone from using 1.5 to 3 kilowatts of power to where 15-kwh racks are not uncommon. Many data centers can't support that and need to be upgraded," Antonopoulos says.

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