DCN November 2016 | Page 8

industry news NORDIC MARKETS POSITIONING AS EUROPEAN DATA HUB WITH MASSIVE RENEWABLE POWER RESOURCES UK Flash adoption strongest among Legal, Finance and Manufacturing industries New research from BroadGroup suggests that the Nordic markets are positioning as a giant European Data Hub based on the abundance of green power available supported by low energy taxation, increased connectivity and a stable economic environment. In the new report, Datacentre Nordic II, the research consultancy reviewed current data centre developments revealing a changing picture over the past 12 months and suggests that m2 space across the region will increase by more than 34 per cent by the end of this year. Available power – all based on renewable resources – will increase by a similar level across the period. Norway in particular promises several very large scale developments, one of which includes potential access Research carried out by NetApp’s has found that Flash adoption is strong among industries such as Finance (46 per cent) and Manufacturing (46 per cent), while Architecture and Sales, Marketing and Media offer fruitful ground for further growth within the flash market. The survey of over 1,000 UK IT decision makers also identified areas of slow growth, with 45 per cent of Healthcare decision makers claiming they have no plans to invest in flash.  Within the UK’s Legal industry one in two (50 per cent) survey participants have already adopted flash. Along with Manufacturing and Finance, Education featured in the top five industries supported with flash technologies, with 42 per cent saying they’ve already adopted flash – followed closely by IT and Telecommunications (40 per cent).  The survey also uncovered signs of imminent growth within the flash market. Within the next 12 months, 27 per cent of participants from Architecture, Engineering and Building, 22 per cent from Sales, Marketing and Media, and 22 per cent from the Travel and Transport industries plan to adopt flash. Meanwhile, 15 per cent of Healthcare decision makers plan on adopting flash in the following 12 months.  to 2.2GW of power, although the country still requires more investment in international connectivity to take a competitive lead. Data centre facilities in the Nordic region are able to make use of the low average temperatures to provide external ‘free’ cooling. Users are also attracted by the capability to provision a typical request for 1MW of power in a matter of days – where ‘power rich’ regions such as Iceland, Norway and the Node Pole region of Sweden – have an abundance of power which can be made available quickly. Sweden remains the largest market in installed capacity with more than 35 per cent of m2 space, but new build in Norway will challenge this position in the coming years. Spiceworks: Fewer than 1/2 of businesses audit security regularly Eighty per cent of IT pros said their end users have gone behind their back to set up unapproved cloud services, according to the latest report from Spiceworks. Aside from losing control and oversight, IT pros are unable to evaluate and implement the cloud service’s security features, putting companies at significant risk. In addition, only 47 per cent of IT pros say that their company regularly conducts security audits. Here are some other key findings of the report:  0 per cent of IT pros believe the organisation’s data is more vulnerable now compared to five years ago due to users adopting cloud 4 services without IT approval 35 per cent said cloud storage services are most vulnerable to being hacked, followed by webmail services at 27 per cent Most larger organisations are adequately investing in data security (72 per cent) and data privacy (68 per cent) 50 per cent of medium sized businesses prioritise data security and only 56 per cent adequately invest in keeping their data secure Less than half of IT pros across businesses of all sizes say their company regularly conducts security audits and less than one third are working to improve their data privacy practices 8