Transforming the Data Center through Standardization

By Thomas Schmidt

Data centers today are at the breaking point -- complexity has gone out of control, driving costs up and jeopardizing service levels. Recent research results suggest the primary challenges for data center managers are stringent internal service-level agreements, ongoing data center growth, and staffing issues. This article summarizes those research results and then discusses how standardization can help master data center complexity and better utilize current resources.

Pervasive challenges
In late October, the State of the Data Center research report, conducted by Ziff Davis Enterprise, surveyed data center managers in Global 2000 and large public sector institutions in 14 countries.

Among the pervasive challenges identified by the report:

• Service Level Agreements The report found that stringent SLAs mean data centers must deliver ever-increasing levels of speed, agility and availability; however, budget growth is not keeping pace with data center growth. According to the report, 65% of respondents said formal internal SLAs exist in their organization. In addition, 51% report they've had more difficulty meeting service-level demands in the past two years.
• Data Center Growth The report found that data center growth is expected to continue, driving enormous costs. Research shows that Global 2000  enterprises are spending more than $6.6 billion annually to help manage data center complexity. The report found that 52% of respondents said their data centers are currently understaffed.
• Skills Shortage Data center staffing challenges are pervasive among  respondents, according to the report. For example, 86% of respondents said they have difficulty finding qualified applicants, 68% said staffing is challenging because data centers are too complex to manage and 60%  believe staff skill sets are too narrow.

Today's data centers face a truly intimidating -- and worsening -- set of challenges involving SLAs, data growth, staffing challenges and cost. The services delivered by data center professionals have never been more important to their businesses, but at the same time, they are under relentless pressure to do more with less, and within an environment of maddening complexity.

Top containment strategies
The report found that server virtualization and consolidation are considered the top cost containment strategies for the majority of respondents, particularly in the United States. In fact, at least 90% of respondents are discussing server virtualization and server consolidation. Moreover, 50% of respondents are implementing virtualization strategies, while 58% are implementing consolidation strategies.

The need for a standardized approach
But as data center managers increasingly turn to virtualization to contain costs and manage growth, there is a clear need for tools to manage both physical and virtual environments more effectively.

Data center managers interviewed for the State of the Data Center report repeatedly stressed the need for standardization to master data center complexity and better utilize current resources.

"Data center managers can transform their data center and manage growing costs and complexity by standardizing on a common software infrastructure -- a powerful weapon in the arsenal of the respondents we surveyed," the report concluded.

Companies need to standardize on a single layer of infrastructure software that supports all major applications, databases, processors, and storage and server hardware platforms. Doing so can help protect their information and applications, enhance data center service levels, improve storage and server utilization, manage physical and virtual environments, and drive down operational cost.

Conclusion
With enterprises becoming increasingly dependent on their complex IT infrastructures, there is an urgent need for effective data center management. The answer to the dilemma of rising complexity lies in the standardization of data center management tools.

Tom Schmidt writes frequently about information security topics. He has more than 15 years' experience as a writer and editor in high-tech publishing.