Data Center Journal

VOLUME 44 | JUNE 2016

Issue link: https://cp.revolio.com/i/686088

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 21 of 24

THE DATA CENTER JOURNAL | 19 www.datacenterjournal.com s ince the data center first emerged in the early 60s, monitoring and manag- ing backup power systems has involved substantial up-front capital, planned and unplanned maintenance expenses, costly personnel training, and time-consuming report- ing. Of course, tremendous growth and advances in technology mean the data center today looks remarkably different than it did 50 years ago. IT operations grew in complexity in the 80s, and the dot-com bubble required data centers to maintain fast Internet connectivity with "five 9s" reliability. Today, the proliferation of Internet of ings (IoT) devices and cloud technology have changed the data center environment dramatically. Despite these innovations, the challenges to ef- fectively and efficiently manage backup power systems remain. Now more than ever, data centers are expected to maintain 100 percent availability despite increased demands on IT infrastructure. In today's fast-paced environment, IT leaders endure constant pressure to identify cost reductions, deliver results and introduce challenging infrastructure initia- tives. Yet they are traditionally bogged down with general management tasks that include asset management along with significant resources focused on routine maintenance. In response, data center managers are strategically outsourcing certain operational functions to optimize financial resources. According to a recent Gartner report, the most evident of these optimization efforts are shis in spending from assets to services. In fact, the analyst firm projects IT equipment spending to decline 0.5 percent in 2016 and IT services spending to increase 2.1 percent from 2015. "ings that once had to be pur- chased as an asset can now be delivered as a service," said John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner. "Most digital service twin offerings change the spending pattern from a large up-front payment to a smaller reoccurring monthly amount. is means that the same level of activity has a very different annual spend." As pressures for cost optimization escalate, business leaders will increasingly turn to "as-a-service" models to remove up-front capital investments and relin- quish mundane IT-management activities to focus on business priorities. MaIntenance costs & outage rIsks As the volume of data generated in a facility increases, so does the cost to main- tain the data center. Unfortunately, the cost of unplanned downtime has increased dramatically as well. According to a 2016 study by the Ponemon Institute, the aver- age cost of a data center outage reached By toM Mertz Why Data Centers Should Consider ASSET MAnAgEMEnT

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of Data Center Journal - VOLUME 44 | JUNE 2016