One of the big issues for IT strategists planning for 2012 and beyond will be the impact of newer regulations such as the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres aimed at improving power efficiency and reducing emissions. One, probably unintended, impact of regulation which may arise from the code of conduct is to complicate the business case for many organizations in consolidating IT infrastructure in to a small number of data centres. If you are currently using virtualization as a way of consolidating data centres you may need to consider that, while your overall power consumption across the whole IT asset base may decrease, the power consumption in the remaining data centres will increase and may be subject to regulatory constraints.
What's your view?
With management roles in sales, marketing, and strategy I have over 30 years in IT and telecoms specializing in transformation projects.