Currently, the major vendors all have different terms to describe their initiatives in the area of future data center capabilities. IBM uses the term autonomic computing, whereas HP calls it adaptive infrastructure, and CA includes it in its EI vision. But what do all these different terms actually mean?
The future data center is likely to be an environment where most of the costs associated with operating IT have been minimized. The term most commonly used between all these vendors is ‘lights out’ computing. According to Datamonitor research, 70% of a data center’s cost is allocated to staffing. Therefore, by reducing the number of employees needed to operate and maintain data centers, the overall cost of providing IT can be reduced.
However, the cost of providing labor varies depending on location, and organizations cannot simply look at current cost bases as a potential benefit from adopting any automatic management and control of its data center. Another issue that must be considered is the maxim what you gain on the roundabouts, you lose on the swings. The vendors developing these capabilities are not altruistic; they recognize that the less an organization spends on labor, the more it has to spend on services or products. Therefore, careful evaluation of the use of these capabilities must be performed – but it is not just about cost.
As the demand for increased computing capabilities continues to rise, so will the complexity involved in providing it. Another benefit that these vendors are working on with their ‘Dynamic IT’ initiatives is simplification of the management needed to operate large complex data centers, and the speed with which actions can be performed.
The benefits of these capabilities are less contentious, as organizations can clearly see financial savings from simplifying management tasks. These include having one UI with a common set of commands irrespective of the underlying technology (effectively normalizing the management of heterogeneous data centers), and the time saved by having automatic responses to business requirements, such as deploying a new server (physical or virtual) so that it is available when the business needs it.
The concept of ‘lights out’ computing has become one step closer with the growth of virtualization. However, the management of the future data center still represents the biggest challenge that vendors must overcome before it becomes a reality. This change from a perspective that the world should be one color (i.e. everybody should use a single vendor technology in its data center), to a more pragmatic view that the world is heterogeneous, and the vendors must enable cross-platform capabilities based on standards, is only just beginning to gain traction with the vendors. However, we consider that in the next five years significant progress will be made.
Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)
