global geothermal news: october, page-40

Disaster-Prevention and Business-Continuity Expert at Tishman Technologies Predicts New Paradigm for 'Data Centers of the Future'

24x7 Mission Critical Facilities Will Be Driven by Location, Total Cost of Ownership, Energy Efficiency, and Sustainability

Last update: 11:58 a.m. EDT Oct. 31, 2008

NEW YORK, Oct 31, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- A new white paper on mission-critical facilities from a top business-continuity-planning and disaster-recovery expert at Tishman Technologies Corporation offers a look into "data centers of the future," stating that their deployment will be driven not by capacity needs and geographic site selection alone, but by the total cost of ownership, the efficient utilization of power, and the mitigation of heat.

Developed by Ronald H. Bowman, Executive Vice President of Tishman Technologies, and author of the new book, Business Continuity Planning for Data Centers and Systems, the white paper presents fresh perspectives on data centers and the facilities of the future that will support the increasingly integrated United States and global economy.

Events in recent years, such as hurricanes, cascading blackouts, wildfires, terrorist events, floods and seaport outages, have challenged the conventional wisdom of siting data centers solely in urban or near-urban environments, and support new and emergent data points on potential system interruption and the high total cost of ownership in those regions, Mr. Bowman alleges.

While on-site and near-urban synchronous data centers necessary for real-time applications are vital to operations, Mr. Bowman says that equally important for businesses are remote-location data centers, for backup and asynchronous applications. He adds: "Virtualization for most applications is now extremely reliable, and cloud-computing remote processing is realistic for asynchronous, low-cost, strategically located assets. Data triangulation between on-site, near-urban and remote data centers is the key to an effective system."


New thinking for data centers: decentralized power solutions

Bowman sees a looming national crisis involving data centers, their unchecked energy needs, and the domestic economy. "Energy limitations in certain regions of the U.S. are real," he says. "Demand is outpacing supply with the decommissioning of both fossil fuel and nuclear power plants, and it is outpacing eco-friendly renewable or low-carbon sources. Data centers are currently responsible for over two percent of the entire U.S. energy consumption, but that rate is growing 25 percent year over year."

Bowman states: "The Data Center of the Future will utilize decentralized solutions--co-generation, hydrogen, geothermal, methane and other self-help methods--to power the facilities. Asynchronous data centers will be in certain regions of the world, where the geographic location would enhance the total cost of ownership and satisfy other reliability considerations. Users will look favorably to Iceland, Norway, Africa, Eastern Europe, or island countries with geothermal energy."