What's The ROI Of Asset Lifecycle Management For Your IT Clients?
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Real-time monitoring, capacity planning, and predictive analysis technologies can improve data center agility and efficiency, ensuring higher performance at a lower cost, according to a white paper produced by RF Code.
Increasing Visibility, Reducing Costs - How Asset Lifecycle Management Can Save Millions in Data Center Total Cost of Ownership focuses on physical assets in the data center and explains how workplace IoT (Internet of Things) and asset lifecycle management can help businesses save millions in CapEx and OpEx, reduce risk, and enable business growth.
The study examines the position real-time monitoring has in the data center management chain, since data centers are the engines of commerce. As an RFCode blog post explains, “Most enterprise data centers spend millions of dollars on electricity each year … Add in rising energy costs throughout much of the industrialized world and the increased potential for climate change-related regulation, and one would think most companies would consider improved energy efficiency their highest priority.”
And yet, a recent survey by the Data Center Users’ Group found that respondents ranked energy efficiency just fourth in priority, falling behind adequate monitoring and data center management capabilities, availability, and change management.
These top four all share a common denominator, however: ensuring availability. So, how can operators ensure availability? The study demonstrates that real-time monitoring can improve availability and lower overall operating expenses.
As the paper states, “In an intelligent data center, thousands of sensors throughout the facility collect information on temperature, humidity, air pressure, power use, fan speeds, CPU utilization, and much more – all in real time. This information is aggregated, normalized and reported in ways that allow the operator to understand and adjust controls in response to current conditions.”
While asset management is a key feature of data center capacity planning, for many organizations the activity translates to basic record keeping and outdated collection methods. Data centers that employ static, manually maintained systems of asset management are actually drains on ROI, creating a lack of visibility that compromises productivity, lowers morale and increases costs, and makes capacity decisions the equivalent of working in the dark, according to the RF Code blog.
The white paper also addresses the relationship between capacity planning, improved ROI, and increased productivity. Those that question whether capacity planning is an important concern should consider the data. A recent study found that 63 percent of those interviewed indicated that they would run out in the next 2-5 years. Building new capacity is expensive — a data center can cost $5 million to $10 million per MW — and co-location prices do not include electricity, bandwidth, staff or migration costs.
And finally, the study finds, predictive analysis facilitates business growth, leveraging operational data to raise a business’ competitive advantage while delivering significant savings. As the RFCode blog explains, “Essentially, predictive analytics moves data center operations from a reactive to a proactive mode.”
Ultimately, “To succeed in today’s competitive business climate, enterprises must implement techniques and technologies that enable them to maintain continuous availability while optimizing efficiency. The secret to achieving both goals is real-time monitoring and management of the data center environment, and the predictive analysis of the data collected to enable a more integrated, autonomous data center which informs decision making throughout the organization.”
To download the white paper, click here.