Enterprise IT leaders want it all.
- A fully equipped data center—without depleting the capital budget.
- Continually optimized, efficient operations—without tying up their own technical staff
- On-demand capacity—without overbuying equipment
- Full control over data center infrastructure—without paying for idle resources
Given the critical importance the data center plays in achieving strategic business goals, enterprise IT leaders should not have to compromise on their requirements. The answer is to engage an expert services provider to help manage the data center. The right data center management services provider will leverage cloud technologies and cost-efficiencies, while leaving the enterprise in control of its infrastructure. Most importantly, the right services provider will think like an extended part of the enterprise, sharing goals, accountability and risk, to achieve an IT environment that supports business flexibility, agility, and innovation. To support intensifying business requirements, enterprise IT leaders need to find a way to balance the old and the new: optimal data center management with innovative business-enhancing technologies. With an innovative data center management services provider, the business can have it all.
All Data Center Management Services Providers are not alike: Choose the Best for your Organisation!
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of IT vendors, service providers, and consultants who would love to help you manage your data center. Unfortunately, most offer a fixed set of services that are more aligned with the provider’s capabilities than with your needs. In fact, it is rare to find an IT services provider that is fully aligned with the enterprise’s own objectives—that is, a services provider that accepts accountability for continually driving data center performance, flexibility, and cost-efficiency, and that is willing to share the risk as well as the rewards.
As IT leaders research their options, they may become discouraged by the inflexibility of existing service offerings from well-known IT providers. For example:
▪ Data center and IT services are often limited in scope, sometimes simply comprising “break/fix” maintenance contracts designed to keep your existing hardware working (or worse: to fix it reactively after a problem arises). Many infrastructure vendors offer data center services only in conjunction with sales and installation of their own hardware. If you have other vendors’ hardware on the floor, such services providers may perform custom integration work, but generally fall short of assuring performance.
▪ Managed IT services often charge a fixed fee to monitor your existing infrastructure. Because the fee is generally based on numbers of endpoints or types of equipment rather than your actual usage, the services provider has no incentive to optimize the data center to make it more efficient.
▪ Professional services can help you design and implement the ideal, optimal data center configuration—for a specific point in time. But your usage and needs fluctuate.
▪ Hybrid cloud service providers may offer a platform to “seamlessly” link your on-premises IT infrastructure with the services provider’s hosted cloud infrastructure. Often those platforms are not quite as seamless as they imply, which means you have to expend resources to use the cloud center for failover or bursting.
Furthermore, regardless of service type, most services providers are not able or willing to help with the challenge of a limited capital budget, nor with the cumbersome procurement process. In each of these cases, the enterprise is still tied to inflexible capital-intense hardware—guessing how much capacity it will need, and paying up front. Even if the service provider can optimize infrastructure performance, the enterprise bears the upfront costs, as well as all the risk for unused capacity.
Decision makers in IT, Procurement and Finance, Hear firsthand from market analyst and industry experts about addressing some of your core issues related to consuming IT:
- Pay per use, match cash flows to usage
- Zero capital – operating expenditure (OPEX) treatment
- Shared risks with your IT vendor
- Managing IT Capacity in unpredictable business growth environment – provision more capacity in minutes, not weeks
- Managing Technology Obsolescence
- Long Purchase Cycles
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