Agility is an overused term that has been applied as a solution to many problems. As a result, there are many definitions of the word ‘agility.’ We prefer a fairly broad definition, which is:
“The ability to change direction quickly and effectively, in response to, or in anticipation of opportunities or threats.”
Agility is commonly referenced with words such as speed, flexibility, inventiveness, and nimbleness.
Does this sound like the pressures facing an IT Manager today?
Agility has become increasingly important in today’s changing world with the shift to cloud computing and virtualization. With growing, and variable, demands on computing infrastructure, today’s IT Manager must consider being very agile in developing and executing operational plans. Unfortunately, the majority of IT Managers are reacting to this challenge by overprovisioning their computing resources, in processing power, storage, and the energy and cooling requirements needed by those resources. According to a recent article in DataQuest, a whopping 85% of IT Managers are overprovisioning their data centers by as much as 40%. And that’s bad, and wasteful, for the business that they’re operating. An effective Agile Data Center must create future proofing without wasting money on overprovisioning.
The Business of Operating an Agile Data Center
IT has become a significant cost center for most companies. It is the responsibility of the IT Manager to operate their data center as a business, which means minimizing expense, while maximizing value. While becoming increasingly focused on the business of their data centers, IT Managers should focus on the following elements:
- Their IT Orientation: What services they offer to the business, how it’s offered, what are the SLAs associated with it, and how they meet the SLA criteria
- Financial Insight and Discipline: Collect and analyze costing data, utilization rates, trends, and present them in a way that enables meaningful budget conversations with stakeholders
- Governance: Understand your commitments, and how to reliably and consistently meet them
An effective IT Manager knows how to manage and leverage each of these elements very well. But a world class IT Manager knows how to manage these elements and be agile. This means efficiently operating the data center as a business, but also being able to efficiently and quickly meet new, fast paced demands of the business. And it means not meeting these demands through wasteful and costly overprovisioning!
So, how does an Agile IT Executive do this?
Data.
Lots of data. Data about their equipment. Data about their environment. Realtime Data. Knowing every element of what exists in the data center, where it is, and how it is.
RF Code is the Source of Data
Operating a business effective, agile data center requires data. RF Code is in the business to provide IT Managers with data on what equipment is available to them, where it is, and how it is. This data is provided in real time, meaning any change that needs to happen immediately is made with knowledge of current data, not data acquired last week, last month, or last year. In fact, in the burgeoning market of Data Center Infrastructure Manager (DCIM), a collection of technologies intended to make IT Management increasingly agile, RF Code’s solution exists in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for data collection.
Contact us, and let us have an RF Code rep show you how our solutions will make you a world class Agile IT Manager.
