In a recent New York Times column, Thomas Friedmand coined the acronym Y2E; or the follow on technology crisis after Y2K. Friedman argues that the "green revolution" will drive a whole new demand for IT services and software to address the need for sustainability. Friedman predicts that such a global demand will further accelerate India's IT industry.
I have a different slant on Y2E. If enterprises truly expect to estimate and track their carbon footrrprint; they will need a tight collaboration between the IT organization and the facilities (workplace organization) The enetrprise's fixed assets...principally its building portfolio represents the highest energy use in the enterprise. I wrote earlier about how data centers are becoming enormous "energy hogs," consuming energy at a rate of 150-200 watts per square foot; nearly 20 to 30 times more than a typical office building. Workplace organizations will be compelled to adopt sophisticated information technology tools to track building energy trends and their corresponding "carbon footprint," particularly when "cap and trade" legislation emerges from the US Congress later next year. Thus, workplace organizations need to become tech saavy about sophisticated systems such as Integrated Workplace Management Systems (IWMS) which represent the state of the art of facilities and real estate management software. These systems provide robust tracking of building costs; especially energy costs; and can identify opportunities for energy efficiency and conservation. These systems also support worker mobility and telecommuting whcih also impact an enterprise carbon footprint by reducing employee commuting mileage.
Intelligent building systems represent another key "green" technology; the systems automate such things as temperature and humidity regulation; lighting levels; and can integrate such systems as solar; wind; photovoltaic, and other renewable energy sources.
Y2E will demand new levels of collaboration between IT and Facilities (workplace) management. While Y2K was primarily an IT priority; Y2E is a facilities management priority, but as Thomas Friedmand predicts, it will take an enormous amount of technology to make happen.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Friday, July 27, 2007
The Data Center: Ground Zero for Facilities and IT Management Collaboration
The data center is perhaps the most mission critical facility in the enterprise. All company transactions, operational and strategic data, customer, employee and market and financial information reside in one or more of the enterprise data centers. Beyond third party hosted facilities, the company portfolio of data centers represents the nerve center(s) of the enterprise. Interuptions to data center operations ie "downtime" can result in millions of dollars of lost revenue, customer disatisfaction, and for certain enterprises such as hospitals and health facilities, possible loss of human life.
Today the modern data center is in the midst of a facilities crisis. In my prior role as a Gartner analyst, I conducted surveys of Gartner customers who consistently reported serious deficiencies in power and cooling capacity, resulting from the introduction of high density computer equipment such as blade servers. Nearly 80% of customers surveyed reported inadequate power, cooling, or space capacity. I developed a prediction that over half the world's data centers would be functionally obsolete by 2008; and would require some form of upgrade, expansion, renovation, or relocation to update the physical capacity of the data center. Indications from the engineering community; vendors such as Liebert, Eaton, and APC, and the IT hardware vendors confirm this unprecedented crisis in the data center facilities market. One engineering firm, EYP Mission Critical, reports a doubling of staff in the last year to keep up with demand. Another pressure point on the data center is the growing emphasis on energy efficiency- a subset of the broader "greening" trend that is sweeping the global economy. Power is emerging as the second highest cost for data center operations. In fact, my colleagues at Gartner estimated that the cost of energizing an individual high density server, now exceeds the capital cost of the server on a net present value over five years.
Because of this crisis and the on-going criticality of the data center from an uptime and reliability perspective, it is now crucial that IT management and facility management work closely together across the life cycle of the modern data center. There are a number of accountabilities that the facility organization must adopt to insure an energy efficient, reliable, and flexible data center facility.
These include:
- Strategy- what are the facilities implications relative to capital and operational costs associated with different data center deployments; ie a primary site with a back up site; two active sites with failover capability; regional sites deployed globally; or an outsourcing alternative?
- Site selection- what are the optimum site locations from a real estate cost; security/ safety; communications connectivity; labor costs; accessibility, and supplier/vendor access? What public incentives are available relative to tax credits; grants; or other incentives to attract a data center operation to a local area?
- Building selection- What are the types of buildings relative to configuration, floor to ceiling height; column spacing; structural hardening for storm or other risks;floor loading; facilities infrastructure; and other building attributes that support a highly efficient, scalable, and flexibile data center operation?
- Acquisition- How can the facilities organization insure an efficient acquisition process through leasing, ownership, or a greenfield development involving land acquisition and building construction?
- Infrastructure build-out- How can the facilities organization lead the construction effort including the development of building specifications; the issuance of RFPs for engineering and construction services; and then the contracting for building and infrastructure construction. The facilities organization can play a key role in negotiating sub-system procurement for air conditioning systems; power systems; security and fire protection systems; and other facility related procurements.
- On going facilities operations- the facilities group should assume responsibility for the data center facility operation; including energy management; building maintenance and repair, grounds upkeep, waste and trash disposal, physical security, and building supply procurement.
- One key area where the facilities group and IT management should jointly address is the identification, selection and utilization of facility management systems that integrate both the demand and supply side of the data center operation. Systems are emerging that track IT equipment deployment and monitor power and cooling capacities relative to changes in equipment deployment and processing workload levels. These systems bridge the gap between traditional IT asset management systems; and building management systems (BMS)
Collaboration between IT management and facilities management is mission critical now more than ever in the data center. I encourage corporate facilities and real estate management to work with IT operations and the CIO to develop a strong working relationship including service level agreements; staffing, reporting relationships, and key performance metrics that will insure a top performing data center facility. In an era with intense focus by senior management on energy efficiency and the broader "green" issues of sustainability and conservation; as well as a focus on business continuity and disaster recovery, business compliance, and most importantly processing availability and uptime; the data center is now certainly ground zero for a new level of collaboration, cooperation and joint management between facilities management and IT.
Today the modern data center is in the midst of a facilities crisis. In my prior role as a Gartner analyst, I conducted surveys of Gartner customers who consistently reported serious deficiencies in power and cooling capacity, resulting from the introduction of high density computer equipment such as blade servers. Nearly 80% of customers surveyed reported inadequate power, cooling, or space capacity. I developed a prediction that over half the world's data centers would be functionally obsolete by 2008; and would require some form of upgrade, expansion, renovation, or relocation to update the physical capacity of the data center. Indications from the engineering community; vendors such as Liebert, Eaton, and APC, and the IT hardware vendors confirm this unprecedented crisis in the data center facilities market. One engineering firm, EYP Mission Critical, reports a doubling of staff in the last year to keep up with demand. Another pressure point on the data center is the growing emphasis on energy efficiency- a subset of the broader "greening" trend that is sweeping the global economy. Power is emerging as the second highest cost for data center operations. In fact, my colleagues at Gartner estimated that the cost of energizing an individual high density server, now exceeds the capital cost of the server on a net present value over five years.
Because of this crisis and the on-going criticality of the data center from an uptime and reliability perspective, it is now crucial that IT management and facility management work closely together across the life cycle of the modern data center. There are a number of accountabilities that the facility organization must adopt to insure an energy efficient, reliable, and flexible data center facility.
These include:
- Strategy- what are the facilities implications relative to capital and operational costs associated with different data center deployments; ie a primary site with a back up site; two active sites with failover capability; regional sites deployed globally; or an outsourcing alternative?
- Site selection- what are the optimum site locations from a real estate cost; security/ safety; communications connectivity; labor costs; accessibility, and supplier/vendor access? What public incentives are available relative to tax credits; grants; or other incentives to attract a data center operation to a local area?
- Building selection- What are the types of buildings relative to configuration, floor to ceiling height; column spacing; structural hardening for storm or other risks;floor loading; facilities infrastructure; and other building attributes that support a highly efficient, scalable, and flexibile data center operation?
- Acquisition- How can the facilities organization insure an efficient acquisition process through leasing, ownership, or a greenfield development involving land acquisition and building construction?
- Infrastructure build-out- How can the facilities organization lead the construction effort including the development of building specifications; the issuance of RFPs for engineering and construction services; and then the contracting for building and infrastructure construction. The facilities organization can play a key role in negotiating sub-system procurement for air conditioning systems; power systems; security and fire protection systems; and other facility related procurements.
- On going facilities operations- the facilities group should assume responsibility for the data center facility operation; including energy management; building maintenance and repair, grounds upkeep, waste and trash disposal, physical security, and building supply procurement.
- One key area where the facilities group and IT management should jointly address is the identification, selection and utilization of facility management systems that integrate both the demand and supply side of the data center operation. Systems are emerging that track IT equipment deployment and monitor power and cooling capacities relative to changes in equipment deployment and processing workload levels. These systems bridge the gap between traditional IT asset management systems; and building management systems (BMS)
Collaboration between IT management and facilities management is mission critical now more than ever in the data center. I encourage corporate facilities and real estate management to work with IT operations and the CIO to develop a strong working relationship including service level agreements; staffing, reporting relationships, and key performance metrics that will insure a top performing data center facility. In an era with intense focus by senior management on energy efficiency and the broader "green" issues of sustainability and conservation; as well as a focus on business continuity and disaster recovery, business compliance, and most importantly processing availability and uptime; the data center is now certainly ground zero for a new level of collaboration, cooperation and joint management between facilities management and IT.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Clicks and Bricks
Virtually the entire infrastructure of the enterprise combines traditional facilities assets: buildings, land, furnishings, and lease contracts and IT assets: servers, storage, networks, mainframes, and applications. In the last half century these distinct asset classes have become ever more intertwined, interdependent, and fused to create work platforms. With the advent of distributed processing in the 1980s, and then net centric computing in the last 10-15 years, the boundaries between space (physical) and cyberspace (virtual) continue to blur. Consider the retail industry. Internet shopping has transformed the nature of retail, where retailers combine traditional store based offerings in combination with web based shopping. Blockbuster competes with Netflix by combining store based rentals with web based services. You can order a DVD on line, receive it in the mail, and return to a local Blockbuster store. This combination of “clicks and bricks” typifies many retail business models whether its electronics, automobiles, or fashion. Shop on the web or the store, or both. Clicks and bricks, the combination of physical infrastructure and web based applications and connectivity continues to transform virtually all industries including medicine (virtual diagnostics); education (virtual classrooms); financial services (virtual banking and trading) and government (self service via web based applications).
This fusion of the physical with digital infrastructure mandates a fusion of management disciplines, processes, software tools, and performance metrics. But IT management and facilities management still remain primarily siloed in their own functional domains with different vocabularies, cultures, and time scales. Beyond the obvious differences, IT and facilities bring vastly different perspectives to their respective functional disciplines. IT focuses on availability, uptime, fault tolerance, and reliability. Facilities focuses on stability, efficiency, capital conservation, and risk minimization. Not that these factors aren’t important to the CIO; but uptime always wins above efficiency. One of the biggest differences between IT and facilities is the time scale dimension. IT assets typically involve a 2-3 year asset life; where facilities assets span decades. IT changes rapidly; hardware and software assets become obsolete quickly sometimes in less than a year; whereas buildings endure for years. IT operations work in real time; responding or reacting to instantaneous changes in the network; whereas facilities operations work in much longer time scales; a typical building project can span 24 to 36 months; whereas software applications can be acquired almost immediately via a web services offering.
No where has the critical need for IT and facilities management collaboration been more urgent than in the modern data center. There is a virtual crisis in the modern data center. With the advent of high density equipment like blade servers; the power demand and corresponding heat gain in the data center has quadrupled in the last few years. Historically, data centers were designed to provide 40 to 50 watts per square foot; or the equivalent of 2-3 Kilowatts per rack. Today, power demands of 10KW – 15 KW per rack overwhelm traditional power supply and underfloor cooling. The energy costs of the data center have commensurately escalated to 4 to 5 times historical rates. It’s now common to see data centers incurring $50 to $60 per square foot in annual electrical costs. George Gilder, at a recent conference in Boston, reported that the combined energy consumption of the four major internet companies (Google, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN) equal the power consumption of the city of Las Vegas. Goggle is reportedly spending in excess of $1 Billion a year alone in electrical costs. The data center energy crisis has emerged as a federal imperative. The US Congress has passed legislation for the EPA to study data center energy consumption and return later this summer for legislative recommendations that may involve penalties or restrictions similar to recent legislative initiatives in building more energy efficient automobiles. The broader “green” trend globally will become more intense, necessitating a more collaborative and unified approach between IT and facilities management within the enterprise.
How is your organization addressing the cross functional issues between IT and facilities, particularly associated with your data center energy efficiency?
This fusion of the physical with digital infrastructure mandates a fusion of management disciplines, processes, software tools, and performance metrics. But IT management and facilities management still remain primarily siloed in their own functional domains with different vocabularies, cultures, and time scales. Beyond the obvious differences, IT and facilities bring vastly different perspectives to their respective functional disciplines. IT focuses on availability, uptime, fault tolerance, and reliability. Facilities focuses on stability, efficiency, capital conservation, and risk minimization. Not that these factors aren’t important to the CIO; but uptime always wins above efficiency. One of the biggest differences between IT and facilities is the time scale dimension. IT assets typically involve a 2-3 year asset life; where facilities assets span decades. IT changes rapidly; hardware and software assets become obsolete quickly sometimes in less than a year; whereas buildings endure for years. IT operations work in real time; responding or reacting to instantaneous changes in the network; whereas facilities operations work in much longer time scales; a typical building project can span 24 to 36 months; whereas software applications can be acquired almost immediately via a web services offering.
No where has the critical need for IT and facilities management collaboration been more urgent than in the modern data center. There is a virtual crisis in the modern data center. With the advent of high density equipment like blade servers; the power demand and corresponding heat gain in the data center has quadrupled in the last few years. Historically, data centers were designed to provide 40 to 50 watts per square foot; or the equivalent of 2-3 Kilowatts per rack. Today, power demands of 10KW – 15 KW per rack overwhelm traditional power supply and underfloor cooling. The energy costs of the data center have commensurately escalated to 4 to 5 times historical rates. It’s now common to see data centers incurring $50 to $60 per square foot in annual electrical costs. George Gilder, at a recent conference in Boston, reported that the combined energy consumption of the four major internet companies (Google, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN) equal the power consumption of the city of Las Vegas. Goggle is reportedly spending in excess of $1 Billion a year alone in electrical costs. The data center energy crisis has emerged as a federal imperative. The US Congress has passed legislation for the EPA to study data center energy consumption and return later this summer for legislative recommendations that may involve penalties or restrictions similar to recent legislative initiatives in building more energy efficient automobiles. The broader “green” trend globally will become more intense, necessitating a more collaborative and unified approach between IT and facilities management within the enterprise.
How is your organization addressing the cross functional issues between IT and facilities, particularly associated with your data center energy efficiency?
Friday, July 13, 2007
A new management discipline?
IT and facilities management live in separate worlds with distinct disciplines, organizational cultures, and professional networks. Over the last decade or more these two managerial functions are converging, driven by new ways of working; the advent of high speed networks, and perhaps most urgently the need for greater energy efficiency and sustainability in the enterprise. The need for greater collaboration and joint management between IT and facilities is dramatically revealed within the modern data center. There is an energy crisis in the data center, driven by the introduction of high density equipment like blade servers; which can quadruple the demand for power and associated cooling. Many data centers have reached the limits of available power and cooling; requiring wholesale upgrade or relocation to meet new capacity demands. But in many organizations, the facilities group and the IT group fail to communicate, and collaborate on meeting these critical infrastructure shortfalls.
There are three megatrends driving the convergence of facilities and IT management. They include the need for energy conservation as mentioned above; since the new energy hog in the enterprise is the proliferation of high density IT equipment. The second megatrend is the heightened need for compliance and transparency. Facilities assets and leases represent huge commitments and liabilities necessitating robust information and process management systems. And finally business continuity. Facilities management and IT management must establish the systems and protocols necessary to insure business continuity of operations in the event of a catastrophic business disruption.
This Blog will explore the convergence of IT and facilities management in a variety of contexts; supporting new more mobile and collaborative work styles; supporting a globalized workforce; managing enterprise assets both IT and facilities assets holistically, supporting the "greening" imperitive, integrated workplace management systems (IWMS), and related topics.
I look forward to your comments and feedback.
There are three megatrends driving the convergence of facilities and IT management. They include the need for energy conservation as mentioned above; since the new energy hog in the enterprise is the proliferation of high density IT equipment. The second megatrend is the heightened need for compliance and transparency. Facilities assets and leases represent huge commitments and liabilities necessitating robust information and process management systems. And finally business continuity. Facilities management and IT management must establish the systems and protocols necessary to insure business continuity of operations in the event of a catastrophic business disruption.
This Blog will explore the convergence of IT and facilities management in a variety of contexts; supporting new more mobile and collaborative work styles; supporting a globalized workforce; managing enterprise assets both IT and facilities assets holistically, supporting the "greening" imperitive, integrated workplace management systems (IWMS), and related topics.
I look forward to your comments and feedback.
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