Today, data is the fuel to any business, and the data center is the ultimate business-critical enabler for any company. Successfully and efficiently managing your infrastructure isn’t just an objective, it is of vital importance to your business.
To remain profitable and competitive, organizations need to ensure that every resource is deployed economically and every asset utilized optimally. A good Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) suite does exactly that: it allows you to balance the constantly changing demand for availability, performance and efficiency, while offering the best possible service at the lowest cost.
However, DCIM is more than just a tool to keep an eye on the data center’s energy consumption. Its usefulness extends to DCIM being a business management tool. Insights derived from DCIM offer valuable input, potentially making business processes more efficient and cost-effective throughout the organization.
Bridging the gap between IT and facility management
DCIM offers insight into the data center’s various components, ranging from the available floor capacity and rack space, to network occupancy and power usage. As a common tool for both the IT and facility teams, it helps bridge the gap between them, realizing they observe the same object from a different angle. Sharing information from a single, but well-documented source, thus creates a common understanding. It allows the data center to be operated efficiently, and in a collaborative spirit. Time saved by both teams can be invested in activities that support the company’s competitive advantage.
DCIM and disaster prevention
Beyond being a tool to control IT costs, DCIM can detect and report anomalies and unusual changes in data center environment or consumption, identifying potential risk. From that perspective it may be considered an essential part of a company’s disaster prevention plan.
Proactive insights into future needs
DCIM delivers insight into both the IT- and facility-related aspects of the data center: its operational
reality, as well as its future needs. As it offers the metrics to develop a road map for future changes in the data center, DCIM can be considered the starting point for the associated change management.
Many companies are discovering the advantages of DCIM tools, both from a technical and a financial viewpoint. DCIM helps companies save millions by improving the efficiency of the existing equipment and reducing investment in new equipment. If you are in charge of a data center and you are not yet thinking of using DCIM as a strategic tool, think again. And then contact Simac for guidance.
Andy Vanbrabant is Director of the Cabling & Infrastrcture division at Simac ICT Belgium.
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