Businesses today are finding themselves on a predatory quest to cut costs now, and in some cases, think about the ramifications to efficiency later.  Remarkably, strategies designed to lower data center costs are simultaneously designed to increase efficiency.

Evolving Solutions has gathered insight from top industry thought leaders designed to help our readers lower data center costs and improve efficiency.  Thought leaders, including Microsoft Global Strategist Toby Velte and FOCUS Consulting President Barb Goldworm, have contributed their insight to the Data Center Leaders interview series.   Below, are 5 data center cost avoidance tips from our thought leaders:

1.    Completely Reevaluate The Management Of Your Data Center: Today’s advances in technology, particularly green IT initiatives, offer tremendous potential to minimize consumption of current resources.  Per Microsoft Global Technology Strategist Toby Velte,  by reevaluating data center needs, including how much storage and speed is truly necessary, companies will become armed with the knowledge necessary to achieve sustained data center cost reduction in future projections.

2.    Server and Storage Virtualization: In the long run, virtualization is best for sustained cost reduction, states Omar Sultan, Senior Solution Manager for Data Center Switching at Cisco.  Virtualization, replacing physical servers with a virtual environment, lowers the total cost of server infrastructure, thereby lowering the total energy costs of a business overall.

3.    Move to Blade Systems: Blade systems, self-contained computer servers designed for high data density, can increase your efficiencies in power and cooling, per Barb Goldworm, President and Chief Analyst at FOCUS Consulting.   The amount of servers common in a data center have oftentimes led to power consumption concerns as these large servers must run in a temperature controlled environment.  By minimizing the heating and cooling costs necessary for a  data center, blade centers minimize the heating and cooling costs for a business as a whole.

4.    Go Green: “Organizations are finding that there simply is no more power available to them unless they pay to build the generation plants necessary to support them,” shares Dan Kusnetzky, ZDNet contributor and founding partner of the Kusnetzky Group. It can be tempting to see the green movement as just another fad, but at the end of the day, it is about saving power costs by utilizing more energy efficient technology, such as virtualization, and little else.

5.    Have a Disaster Backup and Data Recovery Plan: “If your server room imploded, what would you do?” asks Susan Snedaker, Principal Consultant with VirtualTeam.  The likely answer is, you would pay – and pay any amount – to get your critical data back.  Disasters happen, and to recover will cost money. By developing a disaster backup and data recovery plan in advance, however, companies can mitigate much of the desperation costs involved with recovery.

Offered to steer your business in the right direction, the cost avoidance tips provided in our Data Center Thought Leaders interview series illustrate ways your businesses can achieve cost cutting initiatives without sacrificing efficiency or productivity.

If you have more tips to share, we welcome your insight and invite you to share via a comment below.

From too many physical servers to server provisioning processes that can stretch for weeks, many clients we work with at Evolving Solutions describe similar symptoms when detailing the data center inefficiencies they are striving to solve.  Oftentimes, the solutions we architect and deploy will immediately and significantly reduce the money and resources that for years had gone into working around these inefficiencies.

United Sugars Corporation, and parent company American Crystal Sugars Company first contacted Evolving Solutions describing the lengthy server provisioning process experienced by their IT professionals.

United Sugars and American Crystal manage a nationwide sugar supply chain, all via massive data centers.  When it came time to upgrade the tracking software applications within these data centers, the necessary server provisioning process stretched nearly two weeks and cost thousands of dollars.

We architected and deployed a server virtualization for United Sugars and American Crystal that reduced the two week server provisioning process in the companies’ data centers to a ten minute upgrade.

In doing so, we enabled the IT professionals at United Sugars and American Crystal to focus more time on mission critical tasks, including upgrading a disaster recovery process.

We’re very proud of the solution architected for United Sugars and American Crystal (we even won a Beacon Award for it!) and are happy to share with you the full server virtualization success story via a complimentary download.

Virtualization Expert Cisco's Omar Sultan

Bottom-line, companies today are looking for any way to decrease costs.  Cost savings strategies currently being implemented by many companies include upgrading data centers by leveraging solutions such as server, storage and network virtualization.

Evolving Solution’ Data Center Leaders interview series turns its attention back to the subject of data center cost avoidance this week in our interview with Omar Sultan, Senior Solution Manager for Data Center Switching for the Cisco Data Center Solutions team.

Sultan has over 25 years of experience in the IT industry working work for a number of Fortune 500 companies. Prior to joining Cisco, Sultan developed a broad range of experience ranging from data center management to network operations.  A member of Cisco’s team since 1999, Sultan’s current responsibilities center on the Cisco data center switching portfolio.

In our interview with Sultan below, we discuss how server, storage and network virtualization can lower data center costs today and look into our crystal balls to determine what solutions may be on tap for the future:

Evolving Solutions:
What tips would you offer for business seeking to reduce data center costs?

Omar Sultan:
I think, in the long run, server, storage and network virtualization is the best bet for sustained cost reductions. Technologies such as VMware or Hyper-V can be enormously helpful in reducing the cost of server infrastructure.  Similarly switch virtualization technologies such as virtual device contents (VDC) and virtual port channels (vPC) on our data center switches can simplify network infrastructure.

So, these technologies can save you CapEx up front, but they open up a second area of savings by reducing OpEx–less infrastructure will lower costs around power, cooling, cabling and rack space.

Unified fabric would be another example of both reducing upfront costs and setting the stage for sustained savings. Virtualized infrastructure is also simpler to manage, so that opens up another avenue of savings–increased productivity of your operations staff.

This brings us to the second area, which is improved operations efficiency.  While this is often viewed as “soft” savings, the truth is the people are often still the biggest single budget line item so anything that can be done on this front is important, whether it is improved management and automation tools or a more efficient organizational structure.

Evolving Solutions:
Are there inherent dangers in trying to make your data center too cost efficient?

Omar Sultan:
With a few exceptions, customers are telling us that their year-over-year budgets are flat to declining, so I am not sure “too efficient” is an issue.  I think the bigger risk is not being able to provide support to the business in the areas it needs–and these days, that especially means areas that impact the top line.

Things like energy efficiency and server, storage and network virtualization help drive budget efficiency–they let you target spending where it does the most good.  They also give you more efficient and flexible access to you IT resources so you can run a leaner provisioning model (i.e. less over-provisioning) without running the risk of being caught flat-footed if the business buts some kind of unexpected demand on the IT infrastructure.

Evolving Solutions:
What products or solutions do you envision reducing data center costs 5 years down the road?

Omar Sultan:
If we fast forward 5 years, I think we will continue to see the existing virtualization trends mature–I think they will be fully mainstream by them and will be the de facto operating environment for most companies.

I think we will see a sea change in management in the next five years, with greater use of automation and the introduction of more holistic management models, which will further drive up operations productivity and reduce the costs associated with management and operations.  I also think we will see a continued evolution and maturing of cloud computing as a solution to the point that enterprise companies will start designing their facilities to handle more typical loads and rely on cloud providers to help weather peak load situations.

Green IT Expert Toby Velte, PhD

Data center cost avoidance will continue to be discussed by companies looking to trim budgets in the new year.  As such, Evolving Solutions’ Data Center Leaders interview series continues its data center cost avoidance theme into February as we discuss Green IT with Microsoft’s Toby Velte, PhD.

Green IT is a subject that tends to generate as much in the way of negative discussion as it does positive.  While green IT has at its core lowering data center and business costs as a whole, it is also sometimes unfairly seen more as trendy concept than sound business strategy.

In addition to roles as a  Global Account Technology Strategist with Microsoft, and regular blogger to Fast Company, Velte has co-authored the book Green IT: Reduce Your Information System’s Environmental Impact While Adding to the Bottom Line.  In his book, Velte shares strategies designed to help companies evolve into green IT practices with bottom-line financial benefits financial benefits as an objective.

In Evolving Solutions interview with Velte below, we discuss how to achieve data center cost avoidance, with a focus on Green IT practices:

Evolving Solutions:
What tips would you offer for business seeking to reduce data center costs?

Toby Velte:
The key components of the costs associated in data centers have shifted significantly recently. While the need for more storage and speed are omnipresent, as are high costs for human capital and space, power is no longer cheap and ubiquitous. Management of data centers needs to be completely re-evaluated to take these changes and technology advances into consideration. The starting point is to trend the current consumption of resources (human or otherwise) then project future need. Armed with that knowledge, a fresh look at the future data center should be approached.

Evolving Solutions:
“Green IT”  has at its heart reducing data costs, but can be a hard sell as many see it only as a “hot topic”.  How would you recommend selling the idea of green IT to upper management?

Toby Velte:
By way of an oversimplification, organizations can look at Green IT projects through two lenses.

One lens views Green IT being driven by corporate responsibility or altruism, while the other is like any other IT project -that is in terms of the pressures of capitalism.

I try to cast each Green IT project through the latter. If we can’t produce the most fantastic ROI for these projects they will ultimately not be funded and carried out and I want (like others who appreciate the environment) to get these projects funded and completed.

Evolving Solutions:
KW/hr energy prices in the Midwest are among the lowest.  Do you foresee more companies migrating physical data centers to take advantage of this?

Toby Velte:
Yes, we see that now. But not only in the Midwest, look at the Northwest where power is about the lowest in the US. This is where the biggest new data centers are being built.  Taken further, one could foresee datacenters being built up globally where power, space, and administrative costs are very low; perhaps in a third or second-world location with access to nuclear or hydro-generated power.

Evolving Solutions:
You mentioned in a recent post on Fast Company that over 90% of consumers in the US say they’d consider switching brands if they learned about a company’s negative environmental practices and 75% of MBAs said they were willing to accept a 10-20% lower salary to work for a responsible company.  Why are these statistics alone not enough to remove the “fad” label that hangs over green IT?

Toby Velte:
There are still myths about Green products that were derived from the early days of environmentally-sounds products; specifically that these products are not as effective as the standard counterpart, more expensive, and generally less available.

While not completely unwarranted initially (think early hybrid vehicles or CFLs), more recent products can stand up to any consumer-derived test. Consumers also must start to trust corporations that make “green” claims. There is a lot of greenwashing still going on and it will take standards and certification to come into popular use before our trust will grow enough to move from fad to mainstream. Look at the ‘organic’ food trend for a recent experience.

Evolving Solutions:
Anything else you’d like to add on Green IT or data center cost avoidance?

Toby Velte:
The biggest data center cost avoidance is the data center you never have to build. With approximately a doubling of our data centers every five years, there are many groups contemplating a new data center.

Using green techniques, the enormous cost associated with building a new data center can be deferred for years or eliminated altogether.

Virtualization Expert Barb Goldworm

Evolving Solutions Data Center Leaders interview series continues into the new year below in our interview with Barb Goldworm, President and Chief Analyst of FOCUS and author of Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs. Barb has spent over 30 years in the data systems and storage arena has published articles extensively since the 1990’s. Barb is a frequent speaker at industry events and was recently ranked as one of the top 3 knowledge expert speakers at Storage Networking World’s Global Conference Series.

In Evolving Solutions interview with Barb below, strategies including moving towards green IT and implementing server virtualization are discussed as potential avenues pointing towards data center cost avoidance.

Evolving Solutions:
What tips would you offer for business seeking to reduce data center costs?

Barb Goldworm:
There are a number of technology areas today that offer significant value in reducing total cost of ownership, with an excellent return on investment.

At a high level, virtualization across the entire infrastructure can reduce costs, especially on the opex side – reducing space, power, cooling, hardware, maintenance and management costs. Green computing overall also can contribute major cost reductions, due to the reduction in power and cooling costs. Moving to blade systems can also increase your efficiencies in power and cooling, as well as reducing space and decreasing cabling costs. Other specific areas in storage that can allow information growth while getting more out of storage resources would include features such as data deduplication and thin provisioning.

Evolving Solutions:
Are there inherent dangers in trying to make your data center too cost efficient?

Barb Goldworm:
As with anything in IT, there are trade-offs, and finding the balancepoints between efficiency, cost containment and flexibility is a challenge. Likewise in terms of capacity management, finding the balancepoint between underprovisioning and overprovisioning is really the goal.

Evolving Solutions:
Your book, Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs was published in 2007.  In the year since its release, what would you point to as the most major innovation in virtualization?

Barb Goldworm:
The biggest innovation has probably come in the area of I/O virtualization with advances such as HP Virtual Connect and IBM Open Fabric Manager. The other key improvement is that blades have increased in horsepower – cpu, memory and number of NICs/HBAs, making them an even better platform for running virtual servers. There are also now a variety of purpose built blades and chassis for key areas including virtualization and SMB environments.

Evolving Solutions:
Server virtualization has been gaining recognition in the mainstream as a data center cost avoidance solution.  What other products or solutions do you envision reducing data center costs 5 years down the road?

Barb Goldworm:
Desktop and application virtualization are now coming into their own in terms of cost benefits (particularly with some recent and upcoming enhancements) and will be even bigger than server virtualization in the long run.

Mobility advances will also play a key role in changing the way IT works, which will have both costs and benefits, and major productivity advantages. The other longer term change will be the incorporation of cloud computing into the enterprise model, including functions like bursting to the cloud, which can have big cost benefits.

Evolving Solutions:
“Green IT”, like server virtualization, has at its heart reducing data costs, but is becoming a hard sell as many see it only as a “hot topic”.  How would you recommend selling the idea of green IT to upper management?

Barb Goldworm:
Green IT has huge financial benefits, but often the benefits (reduced power and cooling) fall into the facilities budget.
The costs (virtualization and moving to green hardware like blades and other newer green servers and storage) fall in the IT budget.

Success comes when the two organizations work together at the upper management level and see the overall benefit to the corporation. In a way, green IT is a great way to fund the move to a new virtual infrastructure running on new and improved modular hardware.

Business Continuity Expert Susan Snedaker

Data center professionals are in a unique position in today’s marketplace.  It is data center professionals who develop  in-demand strategies designed to do the most work with the fewest resources, whether it’s minimizing costs by virtualizing physical servers or creating sound data recovery plans ensuring companies recovers from natural or man-made disasters.

Evolving Solutions is proud to launch our blog’s newest feature, “Data Center Leaders.”  Evolving Solutions will interview data center leaders for their thoughts regarding topics ranging from server virtualization to business continuity with everything in between.

First up, is our interview with Susan Snedaker.  Principal Consultant with VirtualTeam, and author of Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Planning For IT Professionals, Susan is an accomplished consultant, speaker and author. Equally versed in business and technology, Susan specializes in defining successful business models that increase profitability, reduce turnover and define a clear vision for future success.  Susan’s insight can also be found at her blog, Starting Up, Starting Over – Business Fundamentals.

Below, Evolving Solutions discusses business continuity and disaster recovery planning with Susan:

Evolving Solutions:
What factors play most heavily in developing a business continuity plan, for example, government regulations, client contracts, etc?

Susan Snedaker:
The factors that should be considered vary depending on the nature and size of the business. A large hospital will have to make very different decisions than a mid-sized optical manufacturing company or a small online retailer. The key considerations are tiered in this order:
1.    Government, legal or regulatory requirements
2.    Industry requirements
3.    Corporate requirements

For example, the hospital must comply with FDA requirements, HIPAA requirements and a whole host of other legal and regulatory requirements in the daily course of business. These should be primary considerations for any BC/DR plan. The manufacturing firm may have to comply with OSHA or EPA standards during the course of business. The online retailer may have few, if any, regulations governing their business activities.

Industry requirements may include adherence to certain standards. For example, in manufacturing, there may not be a governmental regulation of the product but there may be stringent industry requirements for precision, purity, etc.  Again, during the normal course of business, these things are typically addressed  in standard operating procedures and should be included in the BC/DR plan.

Corporate requirements include critical business applications, data and processes along with vendor and client contractual commitments. Using the same examples, the hospital must meet the needs of a variety of stakeholders (with respect to BC/DR) including patients, the community, medical supply providers, physicians, nurses and other health care providers. Each of these groups has specific needs and requirements that all focus on patient care and these form the foundation of the BC/DR requirements.

The manufacturing environment may focus on meeting contractual obligations with regard to just in time inventory management, logistics or sourcing to name a few. The online retailer may have contractual obligations with vendors for purchase levels or frequency of purchases or they may have specific obligations with respect to turning around customer orders.

Most companies these days are using a variety of technology solutions and each of these must be assessed as to their criticality in the functioning of the business.  Companies also have to address the interdependencies of systems and the order in which they would preserve and restore systems. Having assessed the regulatory environment, the firm can better assess which business data and functions should be considered highest priority.

In a hospital environment, life support systems  and those regulated via HIPAA or the FDA would be at the very top of the list while the gift shop inventory system may be at the very bottom of the list, for example. The manufacturing firm would include any systems used to manufacture product at the top and perhaps standard office systems (word processing, etc.) at the bottom of the list. The online retailer would probably consider their web-based shopping cart system to be their top priority followed by the inventory system then other internal systems.

If you approach the creation of a business continuity/disaster recovery plan from the top down, you’ll likely take the most important factors into consideration first.

Evolving Solutions:
What are the three biggest mistakes companies make when developing continuity & disaster recovery plans, and how can they be avoided?

Susan Snedaker:
Mistake #1 – Not Creating A Plan

The biggest mistake companies tend to make is to not create a plan at all. If you ask a room full of IT professionals how many of them have backups of key data on their home computers, you’re likely to find that perhaps 10-20 percent of actually do backups at home.

Clearly, IT and other business professional know they should have a plan but they rarely do. The biggest roadblock to creating a plan is often the seeming enormity of the task. Large companies  may choose to contract with third party providers to assist them through the process rather than re-invent the wheel. There are proven methodologies for assessing the company’s business continuity and disaster recovery needs . Stepping through  a defined process on an enterprise-wide basis yields a more reliable plan than an ad hoc approach.

Mistake #2 – Not Getting Executive Buy In

If you don’t have executive support for your business continuity and disaster recovery process, you’re not likely to make much progress. Creating a workable business continuity and disaster recovery plan can be time-consuming and (depending on your company and industry) expensive. You need to have executive support to help you get all the needed players to the table across the entire company.  You may also need to educate your executives about the cost of NOT creating a workable plan.

Mistake #3 – Not Getting The Right People In The Room

If you don’t have executive support, you may have trouble getting the right people to put in the requisite time and effort to create a viable business continuity and disaster recovery plan. Even with executive support, some companies miss their target because they create the plan in an information vacuum then try to roll it out to the organization.

Instead, each key department should have a representative weigh in during the creation of the plan to ensure it meets the entire organization’s needs. It often falls on the IT group to create the business continuity and disaster recovery plan, but in a hospital , manufacturing  or other complex environment, it’s not likely that the IT staff will have enough knowledge about daily operations to ensure that the plan is realistic.

Evolving Solutions:
What tips would you offer for a business as it develops a business continuity & disaster recovery plan for the first time?

Susan Snedaker:
Start with your data. What is your most critical data? Where and how is it stored? Create a viable plan for backing up and recovering your electronic data in the event of catastrophic loss. If your server room imploded, what would you do?

Do you know what kind of equipment you’re running, where you could purchase duplicate equipment, how you could restore your data to new equipment in an alternate location?  Do you have copies of operating systems, patches, configuration and passwords off-site in a secure (but accessible) location? Many companies don’t even cover the bases with adequate backup and restore capabilities and that’s the best place to start for all companies. Once you’ve secured your data, you can then enlarge the scope of your business continuity and disaster recovery plan.

Creating a business continuity and disaster recovery plan, especially for small and medium-sized businesses, is likely to be an iterative process where data is secured then physical assets then business processes. The bottom line: Keep it simple but create a basic plan.

For example, the online retailer may have a very simple business continuity and disaster recovery plan. They’ve ensured (contractually) that their web hosting company has a disaster recovery plan for web services. Their inventory database and financial system (QuickBooks (R)  most likely) is backed up using a real-time incremental backup service that backs data up to a secure Internet site during low usage times. Inventory would have to be replaced if the building was damaged, but with a new location and a couple of computers, the online retailer’s back in business.

Clearly, that’s the simple version but it shows that with just a bit of planning the basics can be covered. The online retailer can then go back through their plan once they get these pieces in place and begin planning for other potential problems such as the building being damaged or transportation to their facility being interrupted. The manufacturing company and hospital will have a much more complex plan, but it uses the same process and starts with securing critical data.

Evolving Solutions:
Your book, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning for IT Professionals takes the reader step by step through the process of developing their own continuity and disaster recovery plans.  Taking away the regulations of specific industries, do you feel the general process of creating a plan is able to be duplicated for most companies?

Susan Snedaker:
Yes, the process for business continuity and disaster recovery planning can be duplicated, which is why there are service providers out there who can be hired to assist in the process, regardless of industry. However, as you’ve seen, the details vary greatly from company to company.

The basics really start with protecting key data. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking it’s too big a job to complete so it never starts. Break it into manageable pieces and protect your data. Be clear about what is and is not included in the project so your CEO or CIO doesn’t incorrectly assume you have a full, robust and complete business continuity and disaster recovery plan if all you have is a solid data protection plan.

Evolving Solutions:
In 2006, CIO Magazine reported that many existing business continuity plans would likely fail in the instance of a global pandemic, as most plans were created to only take into disruptions caused by geographical disasters.  Two years later, do you feel this is still the case?

Susan Snedaker:
Most companies would probably not be ready for a pandemic, even now, but I’m not sure any government on the planet is really ready for a pandemic either. It’s an enormous scenario to consider.

However, I think companies are more aware of the potential for a pandemic and as a result, they’re beginning to consider these possibilities. In an economic downturn, companies scale back on non-essential costs and that often includes business continuity and disaster recovery planning. So, they’re most likely concentrating their efforts on ensuring critical data can be recovered and core business functions remain in tact and anything outside that scaled down scope has probably been cut loose. I would say most companies are prepared only to the extent the company’s primary business continuity and disaster recovery plan is also applicable in a pandemic.

Evolving Solutions:
Wild Card: Anything else you’d like to add?

Susan Snedaker:
1.    Some interesting statistics your readers might find of interest. The most common disaster companies face is fire.

2.    The chances of a company staying in business after a “disaster event” (fire, flood, etc.) are directly correlated to how quickly they come back up after the event. The longer you’re down, the less likely you are to remain in business long-term.

3.    If your firm is scaling back on IT assets or investments in this economic climate, there’s a good chance it’s canceling or closing out disaster recovery contracts to save money. Be sure you review your plan and your contracts. Scale back if you need to, but update your plan accordingly and realize that you are exposing your business to additional risk. Though you may have to scale back, if you review your business continuity and disaster recovery plan you may find ways to save money on existing contracts and services in a soft economy rather than scrapping your plan altogether. The key is to make thoughtful decisions rather than yanking the plug on a plan and hoping for the best.