Capital to invest in new equipment has been relatively easy over the last technology cycles. The priority was to install equipment to enable revenue producing projects. Those days seem to be over. IT projects will have to compete for funds. Cost saving initiatives will be a priority, and within IT capital saving will be a priority. Leasing will become a tool to help manage tight capital budgets.
Every user department will be combing its IT budget looking for line items to cut or reduce. For CIOs, the management focus has shifted or will shift from return on investment (ROI) to return on assets deployed (ROA). Key questions that will be asked of every project are:
- Do we need to invest now?
- Can we extend the use of existing assets to enable this initiative?
- Can we use lower function/lower cost equipment (i.e., modular instead of high-end storage)?
- Can we delay the delivery of new equipment?
The key technologies, processes and procedures likely to help the today’s data center are technologies that enable flexibility of deployment, and improve return on assets deployed. Examples of these technologies are:
- Virtualization Both server and heterogeneous storage virtualization allow better utilization of installed assets and early retirement of assets that are expensive to power, maintain, and manage. Heterogeneous storage virtualization platforms, such as IBM’s SVC, Hitachi’s USP V/VM series, EMC’s Invista and LSI's SVM, enable faster data migration to new storage arrays, which can help postpone installation of new storage and delay capital requirements. These storage technologies also enable existing storage array assets to be re-provisioned as tier-2 or tier-3 storage (usually without software), facilitating the delay of new technology purchasing. Moving from LUN management to virtual storage space management significantly simplifies the complexity and reduces the cost of storage management.
- Thin Provisioning This technology is now available from many vendors, including 3PAR, Hitachi, Compellent, NetApp, EMC, IBM’s SVC and XIV, HP, Sun, and now LSI. When combined with storage virtualization, this technology allows better utilization of storage, driving utilization from less than 40% to potentially over 80%.
- Asset Management Software and Procedures Key to improving return on assets deployed is to understand how well server and storage technologies are being deployed and utilized, and when those assets are scheduled to come to the end of leases and/or are due for replacement. Adequate performance and financial metrics need to be in place and understood to drive effective asset management.
Action Item: As recession bites, capital becomes scarce and leasing become commonplace, CIOs and CTOs will move their focus from maximizing ROI to improving return on assets deployed (ROA). To enable that to be achieved for storage and servers, implementation and exploitation of a well managed flexible virtualized infrastructure has become a business imperative.
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