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.