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The combination of demand for new IT services, higher utility costs, availability of space and power, poor economic outlook and pressure from the green lobby is making it a tough time for Data-centre operations. The notion of agility may offer an answer.

Coming around again
Over the last three decades, IT has travelled almost full circle. From centrally managed mainframe based bureaus, through the rise of client server and distributed models, and now back to a predominantly data-centre model. Although computing power, storage capacities and network bandwidth have all increased rapidly, many organisations are now struggling to deliver cost effective and resilient application services from their data-centres.

“Many data-centres and co-location facilities are reaching capacity as businesses deploy more applications to support new customer and partner initiatives,“ explains Roy Rule, Data-centre Development Manager for nscglobal, “Combined with substantial increases in the cost of energy to power equipment and cooling systems, today many organisations are looking at a 30% P&L impact due to their data-centre operations. In addition, in the current economic climate, and natural resource constraints, fewer organisations are making the capital commitment to build new data-centres.”

Rule, who previously worked in a senior role at Global Consultancy KPMG, IBM Global Services and American Express Technologies, has over 30 years experience in the IT industry with particular focus on the Data-centre. “Costs are rising fast and everybody in the industry knows that there is no ‘one hat fits all’ solution, epecially as demand for IT shows no sign of slowing down.”

Need More Power Captain
Although technology costs for hardware and software have fallen in relation to inflation over the last decade, energy costs are rising at their fastest levels since the 1970’s. Some organisations are expecting data-centre energy costs to increase by 60% over the course of the next year. “A typical 1MW data centre uses enough energy to heat 40,000 homes and generates a huge carbon footprint,” comments Rule, “Costs are high now, but if you look at the current political climate across the EU and the US, there is a likelihood of an introduction of some form of carbon tax which will further add costs of data-centre operation.” In addition, for many organisations who have capacity issues, there simply isn’t any more power available. This is especially acute within London’s M25 region.

Another major challenge is management. Many data-centres have evolved over time and often comprise of mix and match technologies. Many have a mix of legacy systems, Web 2.0 and server-centric applications spread across Windows, Linux and Unix. Add in multiple vendors, disparate storage systems, complex power and environmental systems, facilities management, and often incompatible management systems, and the challenge is clear. “With the relatively high turnover of senior staff in the IT industry, having a long-term data-centre strategy is difficult to maintain. In many cases, different groups within an organisation will have a ring fence around portions of the data-centre, making management extremely complex” comments Rule. “Addressing only one part of the jig-saw is unlikely to solve the problem long-term. Organisations need to see the data-centre as a whole, but this is sometimes a challenge for many companies organisationally, or they don’t have the expertise in-house.”

However, both the technology vendors and the data-centre operators are trying to address many of these issues. New technologies such as virtualisation and lower power consumption CPU’s offer to improve efficiency and ultimately reduce costs. Closed aisle cooling solutions, pod designs and overhead cabling are all developments designed to improve the flexibility of the data-centre environment. But Rule warns, “None of these technologies are a magic bullet, and will only deliver significant benefits if deployed as part of a integrated solution. For example, virtualisation means a more complex management environment.”

The move to higher density blade technology and clustered storage technologies also offer the potential to deliver more performance from smaller data-centres. But as more technology deploys, the challenge of management and power availability often remain. “Each Data-centre client is different,” explains Rule, “but they all have two driving factors: to reduce costs and improve service delivery. nscglobal’s philosophy is aimed at delivering those two goals.”

More Speed, Less Haste
nscglobal’s data-centre capabilities can be broadly broken down into four areas encompassing strategy, design, implementation and management. Each area is closely interlinked, and delivered with the key fundamental values of responsiveness and cost. Efficiency improvements can be delivered within almost any data-centre environment.

“As a trusted independent partner we are increasingly asked to become a design authority to help them define long-term data-centre strategy,” explains Rule, “As we sit external to the company, and are truly independent, we are able to support both the high level knowledge transfer, and tactical implementation experience to develop a realistic strategy, and deliver against it.”

On the technology side, with extensive top tier accreditation from best of breed vendors within the server, network, storage and virtualisation space, nscglobal are well positioned to either offer advice or “roll up the sleeves” and provide implementation and management services.

“Technology deployed without process and planning is not enough however”, Rule highlights, ”and one of our biggest strengths is the ability to build and maintain strong business processes during each phase of a project.” Rule highlights that throughout nscglobal, a consistent theme is the use of acknowledged industry best practice standards such as ITIL and Prince2. “Project management is key, and nscglobal provide services to deliver a single point of responsibility for managing a project between internal and external partners – providing a level of consistency which helps to deliver success.” He adds.

“When applied together, all the parts of the agile data-centre concept can provide not just short term but long term improvements in service delivery and reduction in costs,” he explains, “for nscglobal, this is not just theory but what we focus on providing to clients in the real world.”

“Greater agility is more than just a buzzword. Whether your goal is to reduce your carbon footprint or free capacity to progress your business, if we can help it’s ultimately good for business.” Rule concludes.