Unlike the research laboratory or the IT director’s office, the data centre is never likely to be at the cutting edge of innovation or the vanguard of strategy.

But it is an absolutely vital component of every well-run company’s approach to business technology.

Like breakfast, widely recognised as the most important meal of the day, forget it and your business will go hungry – and your chief executive will want to know why vital data is not being served to the right places at the right time.

Technology leaders are beginning to wake up to the fact that a well-run data centre can improve their company’s business performance.

Forrester Research suggests European firms are beginning to embark on forward-looking automation projects.

One-quarter of European firms are already using server virtualisation, which can be used to ensure that the data centre is run as efficiently as possible – and 67 per cent of these organisations plan to increase usage during 2006.

The Honda Racing Formula One team, for example, is using virtualisation technology from DataCore to create and allocate disk volumes.

Disk volumes can be added to the storage pool before they physically exist, making it easier for IT staff to add and remove capacity on the fly.

The IT department at the Open University, meanwhile, is virtualising its entire infrastructure to boost flexibility and to be able to respond to customer requirements more quickly.

The message is clear – do not forget the data centre. It is, after all, the foundation upon which your entire business technology strategy rests.