Emerson Network Power has produced an infographic that puts numbers on "the growth and growing importance of the data center," as the company describes it. Its 2011 State of the Data Center infographic includes several numerical observations about the amount of data residing in, and passing through, data centers.
Among the figures in the graphic are the following.
- The amount of online commerce conducted during "Cyber Weekend" - $53 billion - exceeded the entire economy of Bulgaria.
- Every second, 1,157 people begin watching a YouTube video.
- Data centers might justifiably be described as "too big to fail." Emerson counts 509,147 data centers worldwide. Multiply that by 2.5 complete outages per year (the U.S. average) and 134 minutes per outage (the average duration). It equals 2,842,737 hours of downtime. Multiply that by the average hourly cost of downtime and ... well ... the infographic takes it from there.
Scott Barbour, an Emerson Network Power business leader, said, "Over the last several years, advances in technology, an increased reliance on the Internet and social media as well as an increased focus on energy management initiatives have had a significant impact on the data center world. Data centers are the unsung heroes. This infographic illustrates how our reliance on them has grown exponentially."