A new breed of Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software is now emerging out of the shadows of being just a monitoring and tracking tool. Advanced DCIM are now providing the much needed Business Analytics for data centers. This can be a boon for both C-level executives and data center managers looking to cut costs while meeting demands for High Availability. This is a two-part blog. In this first part, we explore why Analytics has become critical for Data Center operations in the new world order of Internet of Things.

As data centers are growing in complexity, the need to keep them functioning at an optimum level, while cutting down on costs, is a challenge facing both the CIO as well as the CFO. Large businesses are spending millions to keep their data centers up and running and it is directly affecting their bottom line and ROI. Companies can no longer afford to let their data centers run under-utilized, nor can they afford failures. Sadly, most organizations are struggling to make the most of their data center investments.

Business Analytics and DCIM – An Introduction

Business Analytics software provides a broad set of capabilities for gathering and processing business data, and includes functions such as reporting, analysis, modeling and forecasting – all of which give business users the ability to make informed decisions and initiate actions directly from their dashboards.

In order to understand how a few of the advanced Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software provides similar capabilities for data centers, we have to first look at the challenge of running data centers effectively and at minimal cost. While the foremost responsibility of the Data Center Manager is maintaining High Availability, the challenge, somewhat ironical, can be summed up in one sentence:

Extreme redundancies with lots of assets increase the vulnerable points!

Not to mention, they also consume large amount of resources, and typically remain under-utilized.

Data center assets comprise both physical as well as IT infrastructure. The resources to keep them running include space and networks and also power and cooling without which the assets would not be able to function.

Advanced DCIM gives data center operators the ability to manage all their data center assets and resources from a single dashboard. Through real-time monitoring of all assets and resources, they can determine correlations between different parameters, thereby making their DCIM a powerful platform for deep analytics and business intelligence. DCIM Analytics ensures that all data center assets are in good health while consuming the least amount of resources and provides complete visibility to the power chain, enabling tracking and eliminating potential vulnerable points of failures.

In the second part, we will explore “How DCIM Business Analytics Works.”