While energy-related costs account for approximately 12 percent of overall data centre expenditure, businesses are still struggling with trying to contain these expenses. This is according to analyst Gartner, which also states that energy costs are the fastest rising expenditure within the data centre.“Gartner predicts that power and cooling cost problems will probably worsen during the next few years, as organisations grow their technology infrastructure in the emergence from the global recession,” explains Jonathan Duncan, director for the Central and North East Africa region at global leader in energy management, Schneider Electric.“These statistics prove that tighter management of energy cosumption and related costs, within the data centre specifically, is something that has become critical for businesses across all industries,” he adds.Duncan maintains that in order to achieve this improved control, the measurement of energy-related data across the entire site, including the building, the facility's components and the IT equipment portfolio, is key.In line with this, Gartner analysts say that continuous power utilisation effectiveness (PUE) readings to help control costs will become the norm for most large data centres, and that by 2015, 80 percent of new large data centres will report continuous PUE readings.“APC can be of assistance to companies struggling to measure the energy in their data centres,” Duncan states. “We can provide the necessary tools designed for continuous, real-time PUE readings to achieve optimal operational planning.”APC’s InfraStruxure Energy Efficiency solution provides current and historical PUE values, enabling a fact-based understanding of how much power is devoted to driving the installed IT-equipment compared with the total facility consumption. It also gives users a detailed insight into how effectively energy is utilised down to subsystem level, as well as an understanding of how to improve energy efficiency.“InfraStruXure Energy Efficiency’s web-based dashboard view includes efficiency data on current and historical PUE, as well as detailed subsystem cost analysis,” Duncan continues. “It is available via InfraStruxure Operations, which enables vendor-agnostic inventory management with real-time device failures and data shown within a company’s data centre physical layout, as well as recommendations on how to resolve issues.“A consolidated view of the data centre is becoming increasingly important, and APC’s ultimate goal is to help organisations plan and manage their data centre infrastructures in a more effective manner, conserve energy and maximise their resources, thereby increasing energy efficiency and decreasing costs.“All other lines of business within Schneider Electric also provide complementary equipment when it comes to PUE monitoring, providing users with a complete, holistic view of power consumption,” Duncan concludes.