The dramatic rise in oil prices is causing a rethink of IT strategies, as energy costs look set to drive the IT agenda.

Chief information officers (CIOs) face being charged for datacentre services by kilowatt hours, and industry attempts to curb energy use in datacentres are being seriously questioned.

Energy savings through technologies such as virtualisation are improving performance but can be offset by greater cooling needed for consolidated servers. And even in areas such as software as a service, supplier sources told Computing that customers will also feel the impact of surging energy prices, as costs of running power-hungry datacentres are passed directly to customers.

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