In a recent survey by Symantec 65% of survey takers responded that business critical applications are a driver of the complexity of their data centers. This finding is taken from a recent article by Thor Olavrsrud of CIO. Other complexity drivers in the study included mobile computing, server virtualization and public cloud. Increased data center complexity can lead to increased costs and reduced agility. Mr. Olavsrud in his article shares tips from analysts on how to best manage data center complexity:
- Get visibility beyond platforms. Understand the business services that IT is providing and the dependencies.
- Understand what IT assets you have, how they are being used and by whom. We have seen this in other past articles. Having a good record of what you have and how it is used allows for a full picture of accountability and available capacity.
- Reduce the number of backup applications to meet recovery SLAs and reduce expense. Symantec finds that the typical organization has seven back up applications.
- Deploy deduplication everywhere to help address the information explosion and reduce the rising costs associated with backing up data.
- Use appliances to simplify backup and recovery operations.
- Establish C-level ownership of information governance. Build an “information-responsible” culture and an umbrella of information governance to capture synergies.
