The credit crunch and recession have put
value-for-money at the top of the business agenda. IT budgets, and more
specifically data centre operations, have been among the first to bear the
brunt of the cost-cutting axe.
Operational expenditure on top of high initial
capital investment means CIOs must now cut cost and increase return on
investments. However, reducing investment can damage an organization’s smooth
functioning so how do you find initiatives that are cost-effective with a
relatively quick payback period but not at the expense of disrupting the
business?
Know your Cost-Cutting Sweet
Spots:
Maintenance and support accounts for more than
50 percent of an organisations IT budget. In the initial phase, an audit
team should identify all DCO assets deployed. This will enable analysis
of annual spending on servers and storage devices, network components, software
licenses, applications, databases, and operating systems.
Overspending on under-used assets can then be
cut without threatening business continuity or asset performance. Doing more
with existing resources and becoming more effective, or rationalizing existing
resources and improving efficiency, are the goals here.
Consolidate Everywhere:
Enterprises can leverage consolidation
opportunities in various areas - servers, applications, storage, networks,
people, resources and processes, and even entire data centers. This leads
to economies of scale, less complexity and better manageability.
Consolidating multiple data centers can have a
significant impact on the budget. In addition to regular overheads like real
estate cost, and maintenance and upkeep, it can save on operational costs such
as energy and personnel.
At the other ends of the scale, application
consolidation can reduce management complexity and cost significantly. By
deploying multiple applications on fewer, larger servers, the organization can
reduce the instances of the operating system it runs thus reducing the total
cost of ownership.
Implement Virtualization:
Instead of deploying multiple servers to host
individual applications, virtualization equips enterprises with the capability
to host a number of virtual servers on one physical server. It also enables
reuse of resources for varied purposes and maximizes use of each resource.
Enterprises can thus defer purchase of new servers and shrink costs by reducing
the amount of hardware that must be replaced.
Automate Services:
Process automation replaces manual execution of
repetitive functions, reduces errors and allows administrators to focus on
value-added functions that ensure continuous high-quality service delivery.
Services like patch management, server provisioning, configuration management,
security alerts, password resets, etc can be automated to reduce the number of
man-hours spent dealing with these tasks and thereby lower human resource
costs.
Standardise Tools and
Processes: Data
centers leverage a variety of tools to manage activities like clustering,
replication, backup and recovery, and other critical aspects of the
infrastructure. Each of these tools generally provides its own user interface
or management framework. Standardization ensures that devices have consistent
interfaces and protocols. This means simplified systems management,
maintenance, and lower labour costs.
Opt for an Adaptive Data
centre:
New generation data centers need to be flexible
enough to address near-term infrastructure requirements and also account for
future business growth while continuously reducing overall infrastructure costs
and complexity. Organisations can address these objectives by purchasing
services like servers, software, storage or network equipment as a fully
outsourced entity.
Such services are generally billed on the basis
of the amount of resources consumed. Hence, aside from the higher flexibility,
the usage-based pricing model allows customers to pay as they grow, Along with
the advantage of leveraging the latest technology to achieve faster service
delivery and time-to-market without incurring the associated incremental
investments.
Target Cost Containment
through Global Delivery:
Studies have proven that a CIO administrating
the entire data centre from a particular geography can potentially save
anywhere between 35-40% in a year by embracing the global delivery model.
Thereafter, the company can expect year-on-year productivity gains of 8-10
percent. Thus, in a period of three years, the organization can save 45-50%
assuming that all kinds of services are being delivered out of a single
geography at the moment.
Conclusion
The objective of any IT initiative is to drive
continuous profitable growth while lowering capex and opex. To effectively
maintain their businesses, enterprises should streamline, automate, and
standardize processes to reduce data center-related costs, improve business
efficiency, increase innovation, and drive profitable business growth.
As we have seen, enterprises can leverage
virtualization and consolidation opportunities in various areas including
servers, applications, storage, networks, people, resources and processes, and
the actual physical locations of the data centers. However, internal
stakeholders need to be involved in this process to understand which resources
applications use and its usage patterns. Comprehensive planning is required to
leverage the full benefits of consolidation or virtualization.
This article first appeared in datacentermanagement
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