The Importance of Partnerships

Penny Jones speaks to Richard Jenkins, VP of Marketing for DCIM vendor RF Code, about partnerships in the evolving DCIM space.

How do you think the Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) industry is liley to evolve?

Dramatically and fast. Last year was the year of education about DCIM, where the industry spent most of the time attempting to define what DCIM means. The end of 2012 saw many larger companies with global data centers implementing investment strategies for data center growth while focusing on continual consolidation and cost management. This is only achieved by implementing an automated DCIM suite.

This year will see DCIM solutions (integrated point products from multiple vendors) implement standards to support regulatory requirements, real-time capacity planning to aid energy effcicency, open architectures to enable simple integration with business applications and carbon calculators which take complex energy and environmental infomration for sustainability reporting.

Will we see considerable change in the business environment for companies delivering DCIM?

Not necessarily changes but challneges. The DCIM space, even though relatively young, is crowded. One customer of RF Code's was in the process of evaluating nine DCIM vendors in November 2012. This level of competition will reward the innovators and those able to associate a deeply technical suite of applications with business benefits.

One area in which considerable change will be seen is in the provision of DCIM-as-a-Service.  Sstems integrators, building and managing enterprise data centers, see huge services opportunities in using integrated DCIM tools to increase the "stickiness" with their customers.

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