Johannesburg, 09 Nov 2006
ICT consolidation is a contentious and often-misunderstood topic in the business world today.
While in its purest form the concept of IT consolidation means the centralisation of computing resources to a single location, many organisations caught up in the hype may end up over-consolidating and in-turn decrease the overall performance of their IT environment.
Greg Pothitos, product manager at Tarsus Technologies, says part of the problem is that there's no clear definition for the word consolidation.
"Consolidation is a broad topic and it's easy to become confused amid all the activity taking place in this part of the market," he explains.
"For example, some companies believe their consolidation strategy should focus on the replacement of multiple servers in their environment with a single, more powerful server that's capable of running all of their services from a central computing resource.
"This, in my opinion, is over-consolidation and is akin to placing all of your eggs in one basket," he adds.
"A company such as this is better suited to the centralisation of all of their remote services into a single facility that comprises multiple servers, each configured to best serve the needs of a specific application or service," he opines.
"This facility could consist of multiple conventional rack-mount servers or more cutting blade servers, which deliver the same functionality but with less power consumption and a smaller footprint."
By taking this approach to consolidation, a company's risk is spread out across multiple investments.
"Together with server consolidation, companies could also look at consolidating their storage environment. By centralising both the storage and management of data in a single facility, organisations can make better use of their storage and track the cost more effectively," he says.
Another often forgotten part of consolidation is software consolidation. Pothitos says this can take the form of operating system consolidation, application consolidation or management software consolidation.
"One of the central reasons behind consolidation is to achieve better economies of scale and lessen the administrative burden on the organisation's IT department. By reducing the varieties of operating systems and application software in the environment, and then monitoring this from a single integrated management suite such as HP OpenView, organisations can afford to get by with less IT staff, since the areas of competency need no longer be as broad as they would be in a more heterogeneous environment.
"A last form of consolidation could be brand or architecture consolidation. As is the case with managing a smaller portfolio of software, so the organisation needs fewer IT staff, as there are less architectures or brands to administer," he says.
"The kind of consolidation strategy a company ultimately settles on has a great deal to do with their current IT environment and infrastructure.
"We therefore recommend that on engagement with a reseller partner, organisations begin by conducting a full audit of their IT environment, identifying what their priorities and critical business needs are. Only after gaining strong insight into the environment and what the customer needs from their consolidation strategy, can a reseller provide advice on the best route forward," he concludes.
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