Data centres costs – weather is a key factor

(Image from Economist.com)

A few weeks ago I was listening to the radio in the car. A news item  came on about why Ireland is attractive to companies like Google and Microsoft to set up data centres. It wasn’t tax, or our educated workforce.  Much to my surprise it was the Irish weather. Well, I suppose all three are important, but with an ambient average temperature well below 20 celsius, the cost of cooling the data centres falls considerably. Here’s a post I read earlier from Babbages’ blog on The Economist. It gives some great detail on the costs of running these data centres Data centres: Social desert | The Economist. I have to say, as a management  accountant weather conditions would not be the first thing I’d consider in cost decisions – a good reason to talk to other people in the organisation to find out what’s going on.