Companies with fewer ICT facilities or younger IT managers are up to twice as likely to prioritize energy efficiency, while less affluent verticals appear unaware of the impact of energy efficiency on total cost of ownership

February 7, 2023 – London, UK – Despite data centers consuming about 1% of the world’s electricity production[1]the dramatic rise in energy prices over the past 12 months and increasingly frequent warnings from environmental agencies, UK organizations with large numbers of servers are still unlikely to prioritize energy efficiency in their data centre.

Among UK organizations with 11 or more servers:

• 35% say energy efficiency should be a factor in server purchasing decisions. Fewer – 34% – say energy efficiency is a factor in such decisions.
• 33% agree that server-related energy costs should be a part of their IT budgets, while 36% disagree.
• 56% say server-related energy costs are an IT budget item, and 32% say they are not.
• 47% say their IT department has an energy efficiency and sustainability policy
• 24% say energy efficiency is less important when buying servers than it was 12 months ago.

Data: Compiled into a new report by the server manufacturer Asus, Energy efficiency in the data center – indicates that organizations with fewer servers prioritize energy efficiency much higher. For example, among organizations with 2-5 servers:

• 62% agree that energy efficiency should be a factor in server purchasing decisions, compared to just 6% who disagree. More – 71% – say energy efficiency is a factor in such decisions.
• 62% agree that server-related energy costs should be a part of their IT budgets, while 8% disagree.
• 89% say server-related energy is an IT budget item, and 9% say it isn’t.
• 81% say their IT department has an energy efficiency and sustainability policy.
• 3% say energy efficiency is less important when buying servers than it was 12 months ago.

One explanation for the variation between organizations with more/fewer servers could be energy price expectations: respondents from organizations with more than 10 servers are twice as optimistic than respondents from organizations with 2-5 servers that prices of energy will return to long-term standards within two years.

The age of the respondents heavily influences their priority of ICT energy efficiency. For example:

• 57% of respondents aged 25-34 agree that server-related energy costs should be an item in their IT budgets, with 21% disagree. Among respondents aged 55 and older, only 19% agreed and nearly half (46%) disagreed.
• 55% of respondents aged 25-34 say energy efficiency should be a factor in server purchasing decisions. This percentage dropped to 51% for those aged 35-44, 51% for those aged 45-54 and 42% for respondents aged 55 and over

Younger respondents are nearly twice as likely to prioritize energy efficiency. To the question « Is energy efficiency a priority in the server purchasing process? »:

• 60% of respondents aged 25-34 and 61% of respondents aged 35-44 said yes; only 15% of 25-34 year olds said no
• 31% of respondents aged 55 and over said yes, while 46% of this cohort said no

Two vertical sectors generally considered among the least affluent, Education and Arts/Culture, have emerged as least concerned with the impact of energy efficiency on the total cost of ownership. Examples:

• at 50%, educational organizations are less likely to have server-related energy costs as an item in their IT budgets; Only 14% of education respondents ranked energy efficiency as a top three factor influencing server purchasing decisions
• Nearly a quarter of arts/cultural organizations, a higher proportion than any other industry, said energy efficiency is less of a factor in server purchasing decisions than it was 12 months ago

Morten Mjels is the Country Product Manager for ASUS servers in the UK and Ireland. He said: « In the survey, we also asked respondents to identify the top three factors in their server purchasing decisions, and it would have been perfectly possible for any respondent to say, well, ‘performance, energy efficiency, warranty and these are equally important.’ ‘, or ‘price, energy efficiency, performance and these are equally important.’ But they didn’t: the data seems to indicate that buyers think there is a trade-off between these attributes, forcing IT managers and purchasing departments to choose based on which attribute is most important to their organization ».

“Frankly: This is a misperception: all major manufacturers are focused on improving the energy efficiency of servers, while world performance records are broken all the time, from the same servers. It’s a story the industry needs to tell more: You can have both energy efficiency and performance. As a sustainability leader, ASUS would like to see more consideration of energy efficiency in the purchasing process, because we don’t want to see the worst predictions for the energy consumption of ICT equipment[2] it’s coming true,” he added.

Asus last year it pledged to increase the energy efficiency of its products, including servers, to an average of 30 percent higher than Energy Star specifications, the strictest environmental standard.

Although the UK is no longer part of the European Union, the issue of data center energy consumption has attracted political attention in recent years. In February 2020, said the European Commission[3]: “…even the ICT sector must suffer [a] green transformation. The sector’s environmental footprint is significant, estimated at 5-9% of the world’s total electricity consumption and over 2% of all emissions. Data centers and telecommunications will need to become more energy efficient, reuse waste energy and use more renewable energy sources. They can and must become climate neutral by 2030. »

Commentators in some countries are provide for regulation of data center energy usage in the short term.

[1] Data Center and Data Transmission Networks – Analysis – IEA
[2] Enerdata2018
[3] Communications: Shaping Europe’s digital futureEuropean Commission, February 2020

[ends]

NOTES TO EDITORS

Survey details
To obtain this data, ASUS Servers (UK) commissioned research firm Censuswide to conduct an online survey of 500 respondents: 400 who described their role as IT and 100 who described their role as Procurement. Taken from a representative sample of UK organizations across all major verticals, all respondents met the criteria of:

• their organization manages a minimum of 2 servers (no maximum)
• the person who has a significant role in the process of purchasing servers for your organization; and/or play a significant role in the administration/operation/management of servers for your organization

The number of servers in respondents’ organizations is broken down as follows:

• 2-5 servers: 247 respondents
• 6-10 servers: 147 respondents
• 11+ servers: 106 respondents

Full details of the methodology and demographics are contained in the report from ASUS, Energy efficiency in the data center.

Support quotes
“The IT industry is rapidly transforming, with a key focus now on sustainability and energy efficiency across all aspects of operations. This is proving challenging for areas like AI, ML or VR that require more computing power and generate much more heat. Traditional air-cooled data centers are struggling to reduce the extra heat generated by these new demands, and this is where the sustainability issue lies as more energy, water and cooling are consumed.

This is why it’s great to see ASUS increase its focus on energy efficiency of servers and use them in new liquid cooling technologies, addressing the challenge of performance and energy efficiency and setting measurable goals. The survey results presented are an essential step in creating a better understanding and increasing end-user perceptions of performance for efficiency.”

Jon Clark – Carbon-Z Commercial Director

“There should be no doubt: IT is a force for good. As well as saving us time and keeping in touch with our loved ones, it helps increase overall productivity, enabling us to do more with less, thus reducing our carbon footprint. However, an industry-wide conversation is needed not only on the use of clean energy, which dominates the sustainability narrative, but also on energy efficiency. It is very encouraging to see ASUS increase its focus on server energy efficiency and set measurable goals. The survey results presented here are also an important step in addressing the misconception that end users must sacrifice performance for efficiency and vice versa. »

Vlad Galabov, director of cloud and data center research at Omdia.

About ASUS
Taiwan-based ASUS is a global technology leader, employing more than 5,000 R&D professionals and with more than 1,000 service centers covering 98 countries.

With over 25 years of experience building high-quality servers and workstations, ASUS aims to provide the right mix of performance, green computing, and management to meet customer needs. It offers a choice of versatile, resilient, and scalable rack units designed for data center environments of all sizes and for diverse purposes such as content creation, cloud gaming, artificial intelligence, and high-performance computing. Its server range includes rack, GPU and high-density servers, while its workstation range includes « high performance », « mainstream » and « essential » systems.

Its products are backed by the industry’s only five-year warranty and an outstanding channel that make ASUS the most trusted partner in the data center.

Contacts with the media
Rose Ross, Omarketing Ltd., +44 7976 154597, rose@omarketing.com