Transforming and optimising the data centre has benefits across business operations, and can deliver significant bottom-line payback.
This is according to Brent Lees, senior product manager at Riverbed Technology, who stresses that while data centre management was traditionally the domain of the IT department, it now underpins all areas of business.
"The structure and performance of the data centre has become a management issue. Because the data centre is the heart of enterprise operations, the repository of all corporate intellectual property, and a key factor in risk and compliance management, the data centre is now management's problem."
According to Lees, data centres were seen as cost centres until recently, but factors like virtualisation and cloud computing have transformed them into something that propels forward-thinking enterprises to new levels of competitiveness.
"The global focus for data centres now is moving to the cloud, the software-defined data centre, and ensuring optimum security and performance while keeping costs to a minimum," says Lees. "In addition, data is now being recognised as an enterprise asset, which needs to be stored, managed and accessed efficiently, in order to support business growth."
In order to deliver on their potential, data centres must be transformed, says Lees. "Not only can data centre transformation revolutionise the enterprise's operations, it can also deliver substantial savings and a significant return on investment," he says, adding that consolidation is key.
"By consolidating data centres, enterprises are able to reduce the complexity and cost of running multiple data centres, as well as enabling greater control and security over data." An enterprise with branch offices in high-risk and remote areas, and the rise of an increasingly mobile workforce, means employees need to be able to access enterprise applications from remote areas, he notes. "The consolidation of data centres delivers significantly improved control as well as reduces operating costs. Riverbed itself runs one main data centre, with one backup, which delivers significant efficiencies."
While a consolidated, virtualised data centre has its benefits, ineffective execution can create challenges. "A key issue is latency. If the server is based geographically distant from the user or branch office, the user may experience delays in accessing enterprise applications. This hampers productivity and customer service," he says, adding that solutions must deliver the same performance regardless of the user's location.
"The next-generation data centre should proactively allow the management of application performance in such a way that alerts are triggered before the user has even noticed performance problems."
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