Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 13 | Page 64

INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Green Technology and transportation will be the main contributors, representing 58% of all IoT installed base in smart cities. Intelligent streetlights will be one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in the city Driven by the Ecodesign directive that stipulates that members of the EU will have to phase out their incandescent streetlights by the end of 2016, Gartner analysts expect that those sustainability targets will also have a positive investment and innovation impact, especially for the industrial sectors located in urban corridors. “Cities will become the environmental centres of excellence for new technology development, offering a stress test environment for the industry,” said Tratz-Ryan. “The advantages for cities will be profound. They will not only meet their mandated targets of the Horizon 2020 goals, but also develop greener and more inclusive city conditions that citizens can acknowledge as KPIs.” An example of this is the city of Amsterdam that showcases the massive efforts the city is undertaking to link energy resilience to innovation in greentech and alternative resources. The city is also building user friendly options for multimodal mobility options such as car sharing, bike stations or walkable streets. Implementing a BMS system can reduce energy consumption by 50% In parallel, the EU Energy Efficiency Directive means public buildings and private real estate will have to reduce their energy consumption by 3% every year. Today, heating, cooling and lighting are responsible for approximately 60% of a building’s energy consumption. “Implementing an integrated business management system (BMS) for lighting and heating and cooling can reduce energy consumption by 50%,” said Tratz-Ryan. “This is a significant contribution to the commitments of cities to reduce their footprint of GHG.” Companies that implement a smart LED’s lighting system could realise a 60-70% saving. By integrating the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system with occupancy and building utilisation savings close to 50% can be achieved. 64 INTELLIGENTCIO At a glance… Data centres in Africa and Middle East yet to adopt green practices Technavio analysts forecast the data centre cooling market in Africa and Middle East to grow at a CAGR of more than 19% during the forecast period, according to their latest report. The research study covers the present scenario and growth prospects of the data centre cooling market from 2016 to 2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers revenue generated from investments made in new data centres and the renovation of existing ones. At present, the adoption of high-performance computing infrastructure in data centres is low in Africa and Middle East. However, growth in cloud, Internet of Things, and big data analytics will prompt enterprises to invest in data centres and adopt high-performance infrastructure with at least 20% spending with respect to the overall infrastructure spending. Most data centre operators in Africa and Middle East are aware of the high operating costs involved in data centres. In this region, most upcoming data centre facilities are expected to be designed based on Tier 3 and Tier 4 standards. However, these data centres will require energy efficient infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions and power consumption. Power consumption is the major operating cost of any data centre operator. Enterprises in Africa and Middle East planning to establish data centres will likely adopt energy efficient cooling techniques like free cooling to minimise operating costs. Technavio analysts highlight the following four factors that are contributing to the growth of the data centre cooling market in Africa and Middle East: - - - - - Increase in construction of new data centres Growing construction of green data centres Increased heat density in data centres Need to reduce OPEX in data centres Increase in construction of new data centres Cloud computing and big data analytics have influenced the demand for data centres in Africa and Middle East. Public cloud is the largest growing market in the region. The cloud IP traffic in the region is expected to experience a CAGR of around 40% over the forecast period. www.intelligentcio.com