Green IT, virtualisation, security, mobility, the global economic downturn. CIOs have a lot on their plates these days. Doing more with less has become something of a mantra in the ICT industry, and it's now about to achieve motto status.
In the meantime, CIOs facing questions about how they aim to ensure their organisations remain competitive in today's tough climate are having to come up with quick, and innovative, answers.
IT and business cannot afford to work anything but hand-in-hand if organisations are going to come out of the current slump in top form. In the midst of all this is the good old data centre.
Driving efficiency
Behind every change in the data centre, and throughout the organisation, is the need for efficiency. You can only do more with less if you're doing it to maximum efficiency with minimum fat.
The need to get the most out of data centres has driven the trend to server consolidation and virtualisation over the past three to five years. Now, virtualisation has come out of its comfort zone and is moving into the desktop arena and to critical live production environments. Green IT and the need to report on a triple bottom line have also achieved top-of-mind status.
Not every organisation can just scrap the old and start again with a green fields data centre, building virtualisation and green into it from scratch. Commissioning new centres to complement older ones that are full is also not always feasible, given the cost and power constraints.
Says HP South Africa ISS product manager Rory Green: “Virtualisation is seen as a solution. You literally turn off a bunch of light bulbs while the remaining ones burn brighter. The net effect is that you're extending the life of the data centre. People talk about five-year refresh cycles, but that doesn't happen here. I'm not sure if it's because we've exceptional costs or something else, but we don't refresh or rebuild here regularly like they do in Europe. Customers here are using the same rooms, power and air-conditioner systems they've used since the 1970s, and they're running into problems.”
According to Accenture, 5% of the total budget of large IT organisations is spent on energy, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to use data centre space efficiently due to increasing power density. Accenture states that 30% to 50% of vacant space in data centres remains unused due to power and cooling issues. Technology can help, but many companies are not using it, the company notes.
“A lot of our clients are running into raw capacity problems,” says StorTech CEO Tim Knowles, “particularly since Eskom is not making more power available. They're getting to the point where they have to do something, and the only thing they can do is consolidate in some way and reduce the number of servers they're running. Virtualisation comes into this in a big way.”
At what cost?
Speaking at Dell's Enterprise Vision Conference, held in London recently, Christopher Ratcliffe, Dell director of global solutions and services, said a recent IDC survey of CIOs showed that 43% of firms polled have slashed IT budgets since the economic downturn. The survey is conducted every September - IDC surveyed CIOs before the economic big bang - and again thereafter, giving IDC good comparative figures on the impact of the economic crisis.
Gartner analyst Rakesh Khumar, speaking at the same event, noted: “The sky has fallen. We're in a situation where a recession is going on. We're in a period of prudence and containment in terms of IT spend.”
Says Ratcliffe: “We're starting to see CIOs more closely tied to CFOs. Where they had discretion in terms of spend six months ago, now spend is being evaluated more rigorously. We think that works because it takes the emotion out of any purchase, and lets companies buy in the most cost-effective way.
“Dell recommends CIOs consider four things. Firstly, they should look at what they can do today at no cost. These are things that increase capacity and efficiency. Secondly, any investment needs clear, short-term ROI. The CIOs we speak to are telling us they want to see ROI in 12 months or less. Thirdly, look at how you can reduce fixed costs in the long-term, and lastly, re-evaluate any current project that doesn't offer hard returns,” he says.
Naturally, virtualisation and consolidation come strongly recommended by almost everybody these days. Says Knowles: “We believe [virtualisation] is at a level where everyone will have to start adopting it. The benefits far outweigh everything else.”
Accenture senior manager for technology and delivery Mike Rogers concurs: “All companies with significant data centres should be considering virtualisation for their production environments where the benefits outweigh the risks and costs.”
Step by step
As previously noted, most data centres cannot merely be replaced wholesale to accommodate new business drivers. They can be upgraded though, and a virtualisation and consolidation exercise is only one of a number of measures that can be taken.
Companies need to prudently invest in the building blocks today.
Rakesh Khumar, analyst, Gartner
Says Green: “A lot of heating and cooling problems in older data centres can be solved by what's available today. Many problems can be solved by simple housekeeping. For example, where floor tiles have a corner cut off to allow cables to run through means air comes up all over the place. Blocking those holes will immediately help. Over time, things come in and out of the data centre, and the impact of new kit on the environment is rarely considered. A data centre is like an eco-system; if you change one thing, it impacts everything else.”
Older data centres also tend to have old power infrastructure. As Ratcliffe notes: “Most data centres today are at least 10 years old, as is their power infrastructure. If you compare those with today's infrastructures, you can get massive savings and efficiencies by using new technology. You can save 25% of your power costs through upgrading,” he states.
Life in the old dog
Dell's own data centre refresh exercise has enabled the company to indefinitely delay building a new centre it thought it needed. HP's refresh saw it consolidate 84 data centres into only six (three replicated pairs), and all in areas with sufficient power and bandwidth to meet its needs, says Green. The company's CEO had instructed the CIO to cut budgets in half over three years. “We're not yet there, but we're 80% of the way,” he adds.
A lot of our clients are running into raw capacity problems.
Tim Knowles, CEO, StorTech
According to Gartner, future data centres will need to be living organisms that can adapt as the business needs adapt, that can relocate virtual machines or applications automatically, adjust their cooling systems to take advantage of varying external temperatures, be able to perform at peak when needed, and then use quieter periods to self-heal and self-maintain.
“It all comes back to the potential cloud architecture of the future,” says Gartner's Khumar. “This is not happening now. It will take a few years, but the building blocks are here.”
Companies need to prudently invest in the building blocks today or risk being at a disadvantage when the financial crisis turns in three or four years' time, and will have to spend heavily to catch up.
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