What Drives Data Center Complexity Part 2

Data centers worldwide have not been without their fair share of complexities. Many companies rush to virtualization strategies to counter data center complexities, but they do not see what exactly turns out to be the primary driver of complexity in data centers.

According to a recent report published by Symantec, the key driver of  data center complexity is business critical applications. The report that was prepared after a detailed study focussed on 2453 IT professionals from around 32 countries in the world. Of them, nearly 65 percent stress the contribution of business centric applications to the ever-increasing complexity of data centers.

Every app creates such a big footprint that every time it is replicated via virtualization, the complexity scales up further. The data storage requirement is going up significantly after every new business application makes its presence felt in the operational environment. Cheaper storage is not really cheaper when the reality of storage requirement is 10 times more than what was expected, along with license costs and other associated costs of virtualization.

Following the traits of business apps are the latest strategic IT interests in mobile computing, which was backed by nearly 45 percent of the surveyed IT professionals as the next big driver of complexity. Server virtualization and public cloud are not that far behind with 43 and 41 percent of the respondents citing them in the survey report.

According to the survey,  the most resounding consequence of increased complexity is increased costs, which was cited by 47 percent of the respondents. This is followed by increased lead time for storage migration at 39 percent, provisioning of storage at 38 percent and, finally, downtime and security breaches occupy equal share at 35 percent.

These insights will be helpful when thinking about complexity. But if you’re looking for a solution that’s already ahead of the game, contact us at Lifeline Data Centers today.

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.