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Efficiency Challenges in the Data-Centre

October 2008

The importance to business of the modern data centre has grown over the last decade. As enterprises move to a full 24 hour a day, 365 days a year working model, the IT systems that empower modern business practices are more vital than ever. However, many of the data centres in operation today were built almost a decade ago, and many organisations are now struggling to meet their operational needs through current data centre infrastructure.

Denser, hungrier and hotter

Organisations with data centre requirements are facing 3 major issues. The first is limited capacity both in terms of physical space and available energy to power denser racks. The second is cost, both in terms of the capital required to build new data centres but also the rising costs of day-to-day operations. And lastly, lack of expertise to either optimise effectively or build new efficient data centre capacity. Of course, the real impact of governmental green initiatives and taxation has yet to gain momentum, but this will no doubt add pressure on data-centres in the future,

As the complexity of IT and facilities grows within the data centre, organisations with traditionally separate IT and Facilities functions are finding it increasingly difficult to manage the different layers of operation and how they impact on each other.

The current economic climate is placing increasing pressure on IT investment to extend the life of existing assets, to maximise the return on investment and avoid significant capital investments. With growing pressure on resources, a “leave well alone” type attitude only serves to worsen the problem.

How can nscglobal help?

For this data centre dilemma, nscglobal provides help on two fronts. As a highly skilled and independent expert, multi disciplined teams from nscglobal have the expertise to bridge the gap between the requirements of IT and facilities managers. By allowing clients to select from a number of key skills areas, nscglobal can provide a range of services to ensure successful data-floor operation from planning, through implementation to ongoing management while also filling the skills gaps at any point during a project.

nscglobal can also help clients to realise efficiencies by using its expertise to free up capacity and improve utilisation of existing and planned data-floor assets. Through an understanding of the physical, logical and application layers combined within a data-centre, nscglobal can help deliver efficiency savings in the use of network connectivity, power, usage cooling and rack space. Operational efficiencies reduce costs for data centre owners and allow more services to be delivered from the same data centre footprint.

By bridging the gap between the client needs and key data-centre vendors, nscglobal acts as a trusted and independent advisor across a range of technologies.

nscglobal has a strong set of data-centre vendor accreditations and relationships which includes Cisco Gold and Advanced Technology Partner status, Microsoft Solutions Partner, VMware, EMC, Foundry, F5 and Force 10, Fortinet and Crossbeam. The result is a solid basis for delivering core networking, virtualisation, storage and security systems within the data centre environment.

Recent accreditation from American Power Corporation (APC) delivers further expertise in energy management. All of these capabilities are backed by a strong project management framework to ensure the efficiency savings are delivered successfully. This base makes nscglobal one of the few multi-skilled professional services organisations able to offer solutions bridging IT and facilities within the data centre environment.

Delivering efficiency

To deliver data-centre efficiency gains, nscglobal has expertise across key areas of the data centre landscape. From physical requirements utilising APC’s advanced pod-based power and cooling, to effective power planning in areas such as Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE).

At the application layer, nscglobal has expertise within server virtualization, storage, and security. These capabilities allow organisations to consolidate their infrastructure, and realise the benefits of virtualisation, and manage the issues raised through high density computing, in terms of heat and power consumption. Further operational efficiencies are available using remote monitoring and management to allow businesses to focus on core needs while use of ITIL based operational principals create highly optimised operating principals.

Data-centre life-cycle services

To help clients meet these challenges, nscglobal provides a range of data-centre life-cycle services that help plan, build, manage and optimise a data centre. Services include helping with long-term strategy and roadmaps, implementation, training and testing as well as in-life services such as break-fix and configuration management, right up to providing in-house network and facilities management staff on long term secondment.

Real expertise and real clients

nscglobal has delivered successful data centre projects to leading multinational businesses. For one of the UK’s largest outsourcers, nscglobal provided end-to-end design validation for critical data-centre build-out. This process identified crucial design mismatch and multi-million pound cost savings, and ensured the client was best placed to meet critical government contracts in the future. For one of the world’s largest financial groups, nscglobal is lead architect using cutting edge Cisco technology to create one of Europe’s largest Cisco virtualised implementations.

Helping reduce capex and opex from data-centre projects is a major area for nscglobal. A data-centre efficiency project with one major outsource clients have resulted in significant efficiency improvements in network and server capacity and estimated operating cost savings of £500,000. Similarly, for another major outsourcing client, nscglobal conducted a full M&E, Ops and IT audit of 3 of its data-centres which highlighted the feasibility to consolidate from 3 into 1 data-centre. This resulted in a 30% capex and opex lifetime saving.

Data Centre Focus

Over the next few years, data centre strategy will probably be one of the most important issues facing the majority of the large enterprise CTO’s in the UK. With no sign of significant energy cost reductions, demand for IT services on the rise, and carbon footprint initiatives gaining momentum, many are now starting the process of assessing current capacity and planning for the future. The long-term impact to the bottom-line success of an enterprise is potentially what’s at stake, which makes getting the next generation of data centres a truly strategic priority.

CROSSBEAM: CAN THE DATA CENTRE GO GREEN WITHOUT STIFLING CORPORATE GROWTH?

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