Data centers transforming slowly 25 January, 2009 By Paul Weinberg

PromoPipeline Exclusive Channel Promotions Find Out How You Can Make Money Today! ENROLL FREE! >> Factory Direct Should Not be Cheaper William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels Cloud Ecosystem II: A Candid Conversation with Oracle Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting Cloud Ecosystem: A Candid Conversation with Rackspace Hosting Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting Channel Manager Compensation William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels Financial Expertise William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels

In one finding, one in five respondents consider their data center project a complete transformation.

"There is a great deal of activity in all of the technologies and initiatives that make up data center transformation, but we also see a short term focus on results," stated John Bennett, HP's worldwide director, data center transformation solutions.

Approximately 85 per cent of the respondents were enterprise companies and 15 per cent were mid-market companies. HP was not identified as the sponsor of the survey.

HP reported that 20 per cent of surveyed technology decision makers are initiating a complete transformation, while the remaining 80 per cent are implementing individual projects without an overall data center transformation strategy.

"People [surveyed] were using the word 'transformation' but in conversation it seemed they were talking about a technology project like virtualization or a particular IT project like service management and applying transformation to that. What they weren't doing, I have the impression, was actually integrating those initiatives and projects together over time," Bennett asserted.

He was referring to how his company had strategically rebuilt its internal IT organization to support a worldwide business operation. He estimated that the company reduced its IT spending by half.

HP's consolidation of its data centers from 85 to six and the reduction of applications from approximately 5,000 to 1,500 -- the later through upgrades in some cases -- represented only a portion of a true transformation strategy for what Bennett called the "next generation data center."

Currently, HP is sponsoring a series of its Data Center Transformation Experience workshops to help chief information officers start looking at their IT "strategically," Bennett stated.

The good news from the HP survey, conducted in September and October as the global financial difficulties began to build, is that many CIOs are seriously considering a switch in direction going forward in 2009.

The survey discovered that somewhere in range of about 40 per cent or a little less of respondents are currently undertaking data center projects in the following areas -- automation, green IT, operations management, virtualization and continuity.

However, those numbers jumped when respondents were asked about their future projects in the following areas -- automation (64 per cent); green IT (60 per cent); operations management (59 per cent), virtualization (59 per cent) and business continuity (58 per cent).

"Automation jumped out as number one in terms of plans to invest. It is a reflection of most people trying to find ways to shift their resources from management and maintenance into development and innovation," explained Bennett.

Initial automation efforts tend to be operational with a focus on moving around applications, provisioning storage and servers and managing fluctuating work loads, he continued.

Bennett suggested that the more service oriented aspects of automation take longer to resolve. He listed some of them -- end to end response times, service level agreements and quality of service commitments.

"There is a very interesting difference in mindset between tactically managing the resources of the data center versus managing the data center from a business services perspective."

In other HP findings, two-thirds of respondents include data center consolidation and server/storage consolidation as part of an overall data center transformation effort.

Also, three quarters of organizations surveyed have either started a data center transformation project or plan in the next six months to do.

More than one half of organizations will increase budgets for consolidation-related activities, high availability, and energy and space efficiency.

Finally, two thirds of organizations expect to achieve a return on investment on their data center transformation projects within six to 12 months and one in five respondents with more than six data centers expect to achieve their ROI in six months.

Bennett stated these short term ROI goals are "realistic" if one is contemplating tactical projects such as server/storage consolidation or energy reduction.

But if the organization is looking to build out a next generation data center, the ROI is not immediate, he conceded.

"The transformational view is definitely much longer than looking from a technology or activity point of view," concluded Bennett.

"Many customers are very nervous about [data center transformation]. They are concerned that it might cost too much: they are concerned because it involves change."