Enterprises looking to cut down on power and cooling costs might want to shift their eyes from the server rack to the storage array.

The latest figures from IDC indicate worldwide expenditures to cool magnetic storage is set to nearly double by the end of this year. In 2007, enterprises shelled out about $1 billion on storage-related cooling, a figure that seems likely to top $1.8 billion this year.

And the trend is likely to get worse, as storage requirements continue to grow 50 percent each year even while capacities are increasing only about 35 percent. That means more drives will be needed to handle the data crunch in the coming years. IDC estimates that drive shipments between now and 2012 will be eight times the total shipments of the past decade.

At the moment, the only viable alternative to spinning magnetic disks is solid-state drives, which are cheaper to operate but cost more up front. That's why it's paramount for enterprises to make a concerted effort at data reduction and green data center designs -- if only to take some of the teeth out of the energy bite.