Reduce data centre operational expenditure

Rather than focussing on cost of deployment, businesses need to focus on longer term implications such as what does equipment cost to maintain and how does it help us to handle the changes occurring within the data centre?

The vertical slope of change

Planning for a data centre to last the next 10 years is unthinkable. At the same time, the costs of running a data centre are spiralling and a recent IDC report* stated that we are reaching the point where around 70% of IT spend goes on the power and cooling of the data centre itself.

If we add to this the costs of supporting all the 'adds, moves and changes' that are an everyday occurrence in a data centre, then we are fast approaching the point where the ongoing operational expenses have the potential to consume 100% of the entire IT budget. This means that those responsible for the procurement and running of the data centre can spend their lives in maintenance mode, unable to look forward. However, organisations need to continually renew and adapt so that they avoid becoming stuck in the 'maintenance' money pit where resources are simply swallowed up on operational needs rather than improvements.

Bring the buying decisions back to IT

To do this, organisations have to break free of systems whereby purchasing departments second guess the buying needs of their IT departments. Often, IT staff makes a well informed technology decision, only for their request to be subverted by the purchasing department.

Short-term purchasing vs total cost of ownership

IT staff need to keep up to date with technology progress and need even more time to plan the adoption of new technology and to evaluate its relevance to the organisation. This means developing a cost justification based on power savings, cooling savings and maintenance savings against deployment costs, that is, the total cost of ownership.

The purchasing decision should rest, not only, on what a piece of equipment costs to deploy, but also what it costs to maintain and how it helps organisations to handle the change both now and in the future. For example, a simple solution to cable pathways is a wire basket; a piece of equipment which most purchasing departments would believe is only differentiated by price. However, Forrester Research has examined this very problem and found that the time taken to deploy a wire basket differed from one manufacturer to another by as much as 75%. In real terms; with one solution it could take four days, with another it would take one day, equating to a massive difference in deployment costs.

It's the short-term purchasing approach that has resulted in IT budget being soaked up into Operational Expenses so we need to break the purchasing grip of buying the cheapest product and go for the most cost-effective long term costs.

The future

The world continues to move to cloud computing, and virtualised servers with spare capacity to meet the on-demand requirements for business applications. As organisations work through these changes of consolidation, virtualisation and automation, the business is expecting a new services paradigm. They want instant IT gratification, always available at the lower cost. This is deliverable if the IT staff is allowed to do the task they have trained for and focus on the deployment of solutions that have real value to contribute to efficiency and long terms savings, rather than those which offer the biggest discount. With this long-term approach in mind, CTOs should take this opportunity to redress the balance of power so that the correct decisions are made by IT professionals.

*2011 IDC report on the state of European Data Centres