Five major trends in data center infrastructure management

Recently, I attended the IT infrastructure and operation summit held by Gartner in Orlando and had the honor to participate in several discussions. In my opinion, from the perspective of data center infrastructure management (DCIM), many comments at this summit are worth sharing with you.

Of course, there are a lot of interesting speeches and discussions on IT infrastructure and operation. speeches such as MikeChuba, David Coyle, and DonnaScott are good examples. The speeches of these people are almost only standing (and in a conference room ). In terms of personal demo content, Gartner asked each presenter to make a close conclusion with more in-depth research content related to the demo content. This conclusion is far better than the general "Thank you for coming and listening ." This gives attendees a deeper understanding of the speaker's statement.

In this article, I do not have to repeat the important points at the Gartner conference. (Not all speeches directly involve data center infrastructure management). The following are only the five major development trends I have summarized from the perspective of Data Center Infrastructure Management:

Infrastructure and operation professionals need to present their business value to other departments of the company.

This was derived from the summary of donatchor Scott's keynote speech. It also referred to Robert neegel's focus on financial management and Jeff Brooks's keynote speech on measurement methods. This is not even "how efficiently you handle your work problems", but more importantly, "how much money you have saved for your business ". "Everyone assumes that the infrastructure and operation professionals of an enterprise only repair the service interruption of an enterprise. But how do you solve this problem first? What is your reason? How much cost does MTTR10 % increase for infrastructure and operation professionals mean for enterprises? The key lies in the comparison of indicators. What are the advantages of your benchmark with the "industry average?

Why is DCIM so important in this process? DCIM solutions help enterprise infrastructure and operation professionals to measure their business operations, assign tasks to relevant personnel, and display fee deduction and usage.

Infrastructure and operation professionals need to use the business units they serve as their end users.

This can be said to be a derivative of the former. When talking about its own advantages, too many infrastructure and operation professionals will only say, "I can bring an application online again within 20 minutes." This is certainly good. However, do people in specific business departments admire you for the past 20 minutes? No. All they want is to keep an application running online. However, if you want them to know how expensive it will take 10 minutes to bring an application back online? What is the value of these 10 minutes for the company's overall business?

Why is DCIM so important in this process? In an enterprise, services for key business departments are the top priority of the enterprise, and service support for applications of the business department is self-evident. To provide the best support services to business departments, you need to take full account of all the relevant infrastructure through data center infrastructure management. If you cannot do this, your enterprise cannot make proper planning.

The chief financial officer of an IT enterprise focuses on service costs and decision making.

This was raised by representatives of VMware, but the cost of services (rather than an application) is really important when it comes to the aforementioned points. In terms of procurement, they have made relevant procurement decisions, so they need to prepare the relevant hardware budget for this.

Why is DCIM so important in this process? For the above reasons, the service cost is the most important, that is, the reason why DCIM and ITSM need to be integrated. In terms of procurement, more effective refresh of your enterprise's hardware will make your enterprise run better, and, with a powerful DCIM system, you can manage the changes in your enterprise data center based on Hardware/technology updates, which can make everything different.

Acknowledge the complexity of your enterprise IT service chain and be good at managing IT.

George sparks raised the complexity of the IT environment at this meeting, which needs to be fully recognized. The IT environment is complex, and the data center is becoming more and more complex. Process processing is also becoming increasingly complex. Of course, the complexity of service costs is also increasing. However, your enterprise must have a minimum of process management, and you can master this complexity.

Why is DCIM so important in this process? Data Centers have processes related to asset transfer, increase, and change. Similar DCIM solutions can manage this complexity, that is, workflows. IT service management is integrated to help customers manage these complex changes.

Infrastructure as a service and cloud computing will put more pressure on your enterprise's infrastructure.

It can almost be used as a continuation of complexity. A higher level of abstraction in a physical environment will actually bring more pressure. It requires higher utilization rate and higher power density, this increases the workload and cooling requirements.

Why is DCIM so important in this process? The more advanced your enterprise's IT environment is, the more frequently you need to use physical infrastructure and manage IT. This is exactly where DCIM plays its full role: managing and optimizing power supply, cooling, space, and network connections.

Undoubtedly, this Summit is a financial-oriented meeting for enterprises. Ironically, DCIM is considered to be one of the worst financial management methods for enterprises. I don't know whether the majority of attendees are unaware of the value of DCIM, or whether the participants did not speak in the language of "Enterprise infrastructure and operation franchise staff ". All I know is that DCIM can provide a lot of help to the enterprise's Enterprise infrastructure and operation team.