Today’s IT organisations are challenged as never before. They must support business growth and new initiatives, help with the rapid roll-out of new products and services, and meet demands for 24x7 access to information. And they must do all this while keeping costs down.
But today’s data centres are also ageing. Infrastructure and applications that once kept your business humming may not be powerful enough or lack the capabilities you need to effectively compete in tomorrow’s marketplace. Traditional methods of managing are no longer effective.
These challenges are causing IT executives to rethink their data centres, from design and creation to management. And many are considering transforming their facilities into a next-generation data centre.
A transformational approach examines three key challenges most companies are dealing with: growing the business, reducing costs and cutting risks. Instead of addressing each separately, through individual projects and initiatives, a transformational approach looks at all three at the same time, so that the bigger issue is solved, not just pieces of it.
Remove IT barriers to growth
Sometimes, instead of supporting your business, IT can hinder its growth. For example, it may cost too much to manage and maintain, or it may require too much staff time to keep it running. It might use too much energy or require too much space, or there may be too many older systems and applications to support.
These barriers often can be eliminated through effective planning and infrastructure layout for existing data centres, and careful development and design of new facilities.
Reduce real estate, operating and energy costs
Some companies have built their data centres piecemeal, over time, adding new equipment and applications in response to new needs or challenges. But in many cases, this resulted in data centres that were unorganised and spread out over large areas, sometimes even several buildings or office locations. The costs of keeping and growing these facilities can be a problem.
Consolidating your data centre can help cut down on capital-related expenses by reducing the size of your facility as well as its complexity. These changes can also help trim operating and energy expenses, especially when coupled with new technologies and the right strategy and design.
Improve operational efficiency
Virtualisation has helped companies improve asset utilisation, service quality and business continuity. But some struggle with deciding which applications and infrastructure should be included in the virtualised environment. Once the virtualised environment is deployed, IT staff may find effectively managing across virtual and physical worlds to be difficult. It may be unclear which physical resources are supporting specific technology services.
You can make your virtualised environment more efficient and effective by developing a sound strategy before you begin an implementation. Existing data centres can overcome these issues by adding with capabilities like dynamic capacity planning, or incorporating technologies that provide a comprehensive view of the technology infrastructure.
HP offers solutions, products and services that can help you address these areas and transform your data centre into a next-generation tool that can meet future challenges.
Building an effective next-generation data centre requires changes – to facilities, people and processes. But by addressing the challenges in these three key areas, you will be on your way to creating a business-driven, future-ready data centre that will carry your company into tomorrow.
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