Battle For Life: IT Managers in TCO Crisis
Battle For Life: IT Managers in TCO Crisis
November 12, 2007: With data centres reaching breaking point comes a changing job description for IT managers: One that incorporates mounting total cost of ownership (TCO) pressures requiring them to find new solutions to their most difficult challenges yet.
According to American Power Conversion’s general manager for APAC, Gordon Makryllos, the IT manager is facing a number of changes around his/her working parameters. Merging more with the work of a so-called ‘Facilities Manager,’ it’s no longer just about the technology solutions in the data centre, but the structure, refresh cycles of equipment, power management and smart cooling requirements.
One of the biggest challenges facing IT managers will be increased TCO pressures to find new and innovative solutions to capacity problems. Much of this, says Makryllos, comes as a result of inefficiencies within a data centre as well as the issue of energy an increasingly social and financial concern.
The problem comes back to accountability. With social and financial concerns being raised around power usage, the responsibility could fall back on the IT manager to ensure the sustainability of his/her data centre.
“It’s going to become more and more real. It will move from being lip service to being mandatory and measured,” says Makryllos. “They (IT managers) are going to have to find efficiencies. As companies start focussing on their energy use and carbon footprint, they going to need to measure their output – and it will start in the data centre.”
“It’s going to become more and more real. It will move from being lip service to being mandatory and measured,” says Makryllos. “They (IT managers) are going to have to find efficiencies. As companies start focussing on their energy use and carbon footprint, they going to need to measure their output – and it will start in the data centre.”
With most applications of IT now considered mission critical, the threat of power outages would force IT managers to seriously consider availability issues. On both the cost and risk side of power management in the data centre, IT managers will become increasingly more accountable going forward.
Makryllos makes his findings on APC’s place in the market. Targeted infrastructure in the data centre including power, cooling and racks, the company needs to stay one step ahead of the products and trends of the hardware/software vendors in the space.
Standing on the edge of the data explosion, changing infrastructure requirements is big business for APC, which appears to be growing much faster than the average IT organisations.
High density computing environments are also putting more emphasis back on the power conundrum. “As customers deploy more storage and blade servers, they’re having troubles getting enough power into that building and we know in some suburbs, customers have simply been told there is no more power available!” says Makryllos.
Based on customer feedback to APC, Makryllos is noting a considerable move for IT managers to seek more education on these changing factors.
“There are three stresses I’m seeing around education; how do I deploy high-density IT in my data room, how do I get a better outcome on my TCO and thirdly, how to I manage this rapid change?” he says.
Meanwhile rapid refresh cycles are also impacting IT managers. Depending on the scale and size of a data centre, managers can be facing refresh cycles on almost a monthly basis. Day to day equipment and lad changes may be required alongside training and advice on new technologies; change management issues affecting IT personnel.