One consistent theme that emerged from our World Of Servers coverage from Data Centre World last week was that data centre budgets are tight. So now we're wondering: what's happening with the data centre budget where you work?

Our ongoing World Of Servers adventure hit London last week for the Data Centre World conference. Here are five key lessons I absorbed from that event.

Virtualisation is often the first stage to making more effective use of your data centre. However, to maximise that efficiency, you need to automate as much as possible and ensure you keep a tight lid on storage costs.

Few IT pros would want to work for an organisation which has no cloud strategy at all. However, a vague cloud strategy that doesn't deal specifically in how cloud will assist your business is arguably of even less value.

Data centre design is becoming increasingly standardised, but that doesn't mean the design process is straightforward. Avoid costly errors by dodging these common data centre design mistakes.

The classic role of an IT pro was rather like a GP -- you needed to know a lot about a wide variety of potential problem areas. Is that still the case today?

Cloud services aren't fundamentally vulnerable because they're badly designed; they're vulnerable because they are used by people who can easily be manipulated via social engineering. If your business uses cloud services and you don't educate your staff, you might as well kiss your data and your reputation goodbye.