IDC Finds High Interest in Investments in New Datacenters Among Japanese Enterprises

The FINANCIAL — Among the 65 DC operators surveyed, 12 (18.5%) responded that they plan to open new datacenters, according to a survey of datacenter investment trends among domestic Japanese enterprises published by the International Data Corporation (IDC).

Among the 205 datacenter-owning ordinary companies surveyed, 15 (7.3%) likewise responded that they plan to build new datacenters. IDC believes that investments in new datacenters will continue as companies work to improve the disaster preparedness of their IT infrastructure. There is an increasingly strong trend among ordinary companies to outsource IT operations to Internet datacenters, and the building of new datacenters is therefore expected to accelerate among Internet datacenter operators, according to the survey.

When asked about the locations of new datacenters, most of the large datacenters with datacenter server rooms of 1,000 square meters or more were planned for the 23 wards of central Tokyo. After the Great East Japan Earthquake, there was a temporary shift away from placing datacenters in Tokyo because of the electric power shortages, but now that there is no longer the threat of immediate electric power problems, locations within the 23 wards near major customers are once again attracting Internet companies.

There is also a need to consolidate and eliminate existing datacenters due to the obsolete technology in their equipment. The survey found that 51 of the 270 companies (18.9%) plan to consolidate and close existing datacenters. The most common reason was "operational/management cost savings." Obsolete building equipment, electrical facilities, and cooling systems have become obstacles to system operational efficiency gains in existing datacenters.

IDC believes that operational efficiency will be the key issue for new datacenters. Mimei Ito, Research Manager, IT Services at IDC Japan, commented, "For datacenters, it is not just the IT equipment, but the entire package of building and facilities where operational efficiency must be achieved."