Transforming Your Enterprise Magazine

Past editions

Future-proofing the data center

According to AFCOM’s Data Center Institute (DCI), by 2010 most data centers will need to relocate or outsource at least some of their applications. Similarly, the organization predicts that between 2006 and 2011 more than 90 percent of all companies will have had operations halted by power failures. All the while, the DCI notes, the number of senior level technicians and management data center professionals will have shrunk by 2015 to a mere 65 percent of 2006 levels.*

Recognizing the challenges businesses will face in striving to avoid service disruptions and keep data centers running efficiently, HP in November 2007 announced it was expanding its data center services capabilities through the acquisition of EYP Mission Critical Facilities (EYP MCF), a consulting company specializing in strategic technology planning, design and operations support for large-scale data centers.

“Data centers have become the central nervous system of corporate and public sector organizations, and they are in crisis,” says Rick Einhorn, President and Chief Marketing Officer of EYP MCF.

Einhorn notes that most data centers built before 2001 are now obsolete or at risk of becoming so, as new technologies tax existing infrastructures and federal regulations require strict redundancy and backup.

The building blocks

Einhorn says four fundamental considerations must go into the planning and design of 21st century data centers: operational continuity, lifecycle costs, environmental impact and IT effectiveness.

Today’s data centers have zero tolerance for failure or shut­down due to maintenance, their utility costs account for the lion’s share of operational expenses, and they produce 25 times more CO2 emissions and use 25 times more water than a typical commercial office building, Einhorn says. From an IT efficiency perspective, proper attention must be given to power usage effectiveness (PUE), a measure of how much power is being provisioned specifically for computer equipment, and how it is affected by reliability levels, climate, systems and equipment.

“Server capacity is being increased on a daily basis, which is driving intense needs for power and cooling. Power accounts for half the cost of a data center, so this critical infrastructure need is driving the demand for new design concepts,” Einhorn says.

Deep expertise

EYP MCF brings facilities planning, design and operational support capabilities to HP’s existing Data Center Services portfolio and cost-saving power and cooling solutions, and has developed proprietary tools for benchmarking and modeling facilities.

The firm’s Critical Facilities Consulting (CFC) offering includes technology and facilities assessment, master planning and program management.  Working closely with the customer’s technology leaders, the CFC team develops a strategic and tactical plan to help decide, among other things, how many data centers are needed, their locations and accessibility, level of redundancy, topology, migration requirements and costs.

EYP MCF also offers Critical Facilities Design (CFD) services for data center projects, whether greenfield or upgrades. Through extensive communication with all the stakeholders in the data center—and all businesses that will occupy the facility—potential locations are evaluated, and design concepts are developed and submitted to contractors, with reliability modeling, engineering review and detailed cost estimates.

Finally, Critical Facilities Assurance (CFA) provides ongoing guidance and testing. EYP MCF performs startup testing, consulting to optimize facility operation and performance for the 15-year lifecycle of the typical data center, and management of equipment vendor maintenance programs.

One-stop facilities shop

As extensive as these services are, Einhorn says customers—the majority of them Fortune 500 companies—were asking for more. They wanted a single point of contact, a one-stop shop to handle everything involved in building and transforming a data center. That demand made joining an IT leader the next logical step.

“We’ve been seeing the convergence of information technology and facilities become a necessity over the past three to four years,” he says. “So it seemed logical for us, as the industry infrastructure leaders, to join HP, as the computing and information technology leader.”

Einhorn says that HP and EYP MCF can help businesses deal with all their data center challenges today and into the future. “By teaming with HP and understanding what its technologies are, as well as how they are being developed, we can look ahead to help our customers plan infrastructure requirements for their data centers down the road.”

* Data Center Institute Press Release, May 1, 2006.

Related link