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What is on the minds of CIOs for 2007? And how does it affect you? Take a look.

Cooling the data center
Gartner predicts that by 2008, nearly 50 percent of data centers worldwide will lack the necessary power and cooling capacity to support high-density equipment.

The increase in the use of blade server technology and rackable systems can increase the electrical power demands by more than 10 to 15 times what it was a few years ago. In fact, Gartner notes that electrical power demand can reach 25KW to 30KW per rack versus 2KW to 5KW per rack three to five years ago.

This increase in electrical power demand increases the heat gain, which impacts the cooling of the data center.

Word to the wise - ensure the IT organization has completed its due diligence by not overprovisioning. Reducing the number of servers can help alleviate the heat building up in the data center.

Look at cooling solutions from other vendors and monitor the power demand by each individual rack.

Implement server consolidation strategy
According to a McKinsey Institute survey, nearly 75 percent of the surveyed IT executives said that they planned to consolidate servers and 64 percent planned to adopt virtualization techniques that make better use of hardware by improving the distribution of server tasks among machines.

This is no surprise, as Forrester Research reports Windows servers typically run at only 8-12 percent of their full capacity, and UNIX servers at only 25-30 percent.

Aligning IT and business
CIO magazine cited one of the top goals for CIOs in 2007 is aligning IT and business goals. IT and the business should work together when planning their objectives and goals.

One of the best ways to make this partnership work is to ensure each side understands what’s being communicated. To that end, it is important to express the value of IT in business terms.

Capacity Planning helps
Capacity planning is one of the IT organization’s best assets in addressing all of these demands for 2007. Since capacity planning makes predictions based upon business plans, the capacity planning group should be used to help bridge the gap between IT and business groups.

Capacity planning is responsible for translating business needs into technology resources. IT organizations can share the following with the business to aid in business planning and decision-making:

• Application performance data
• Resource requirements data and associated costs
• Infrastructure configuration data
• Business usage data
• Historical event logs