I.T. Commentary

Created by Ray MacDonald with 19 years business enterprise technology success; including over 10 years in planning and I.T. leadership at Fortune 500 companies.

01-Mar-2004

COMMENTARY

I.T. Business Value

Enterprise I.T. organisations have been more aggressively ensuring value for the business.

A list of 5 key strategies:

	Enable a business to be responsive to change
	Align I.T. spending with changing business needs and initiatives
	Ensure that the enterprise utilises I.T. capabilities
	Control operating I.T. costs
	Be highly reliable

This month's Commentary:

Control Operating Costs through Centralised Consolidation.

(click here for a thought paper on enterprise level centralisation of data centres)

Enterprises with operations in various countries should consolidate data centres to a "few" locations. The legacy method of each country (or regional area) running as a division implementing its own data centres, applications, policies, staffing, and procedures has become redundant in many cases due to globalization of business practices and due to technology and service advances by telecommunications and other technologies.

Today's trend to consolidate data centres results in more demand on the corporate data network (termed: Wide-Area Network or WAN). Involvement in Oracle's original consolidation of 65 global data centres to 4 (e.g. Oracle's Japan division continues to operate with its own ERP instance) required a complete architectural re-design of the enterprise WAN; this is normally required. Those responsible for such initiatives (data centre consolidation) must prepare the steering committees and those responsible for financial governance that although there are cost savings in the results of centralized consolidated I.T. strategies, there are also increasing demands on the corporate nervous system (the data network).

Today's data network services, as available from long-haul communication carriers, enable business enterprises to reduce globally located computing facilities. A centralized implementation results in great efficiencies with regards to administration and maintenance of servers, data storage, security, personnel, and other physical facility infrastructure requirements.

Data Centre consolidation projects now have few technical constraints. Some additional constraints might be:

	Location of centralised facility: can telecommunication carriers provide enough resilient bandwidth to the selected facility? Is it in an area where there is easy access to vendor diversity as well as to a single-vendor's own infrastructure resiliency? Is the "best" technology available for connectivity? Shortcomings in these areas are notorious for causing problems with new facilities and escalating costs; some organizations do not involve I.T. in real-estate selection. The location must also be planned in accordance with the location for a secondary, or backup, facility depending on the redundancy specified in the planning and design. (according to disaster/recovery planning).
	Security of facility: primarily referring to physical security. This involves access, but also requires consideration of the likelihood of natural disasters, man-made disasters, and whether or not this facility will be a showcase for tours.
	Risk: Risk assessment, planning, and mitigation must be done well. Consolidated data centres inherently bring a higher risk that a service outage will have a greater effect on the enterprise. However, centralized and consolidated data centres also typically provide higher service level capabilities for all enterprise applications to enjoy.

The most difficult problems to overcome for centralisation are more people related:

	Staffing
	Governance
	Management
	Finance/Budgets (Cost Accounting)

Expansion on these issues next month...

(see thought paper for more details)

WAN PRODUCTS/SERVICES

OF INTEREST

The Pacific Telecommunications Council
Satelite Technology (site of the month)
Submarine Cables (site of the Month)
Submarine Cable Museum
MCI Submarine Cable Map

Good Alcatel Global Map

Global SUNSET/SUNRISE Calculator!

COMMENTARY

I.T. Business Value

This month's Commentary:

WAN PRODUCTS/SERVICES

INTERNATIONAL CARRIERS

PRODUCTS

VPN SUPPLIERS

OF INTEREST