CIOs and the Datacentre Management Conundrum

A study performed by Colt of the CIOs in European countries found that most of them mentioned that, it is now that much more complicated to develop a datacentre strategy than a year ago. Virtualisation is also a significant development that has led to the decrease in the hardware that is potentially needed. As virtualisation gains popularity and is practiced by more companies, it is important that there is appropriate software to handle it. CIOs are compelled to find the ideal solution for their needs and most of them realise that having a company that has the experience and skills to guide them is advantageous.

CIOs now have to select the most appropriate option from the wide range of options that are available. The possible solutions range from having an in-house datacentre to co-location, a hosted service and using the cloud or having a mixture of the various available solutions. In contrast to the past, when all one needed to think about was about the development of the datacentre based on growing requirements, the present day has seen a wide range of datacentres becoming more compact as their load is shifted to services offered by able providers.

This results in problems as there are a lot of devices that facilitate the successful running of a datacentre which may not be taken into account by IT such as the power generation units, the air conditioners and the UPS. These devices are usually handled by the administrative management and if the only expected development expansion, this will not lead to any practical difficulties but when it has to be become more compact, there will definitely be excess capacity. If the option that the CIO chooses is to keep the current infrastructure set-up unchanged, the power utilisation efficiency (PUE) ratings will be high and that will be impractical. Another course of action will be to re-do the whole framework to make it more efficient however one must take into account the expense involved.