By Paul Mercina
India has been steadily shifting towards a robust domestic data consumption market, with digital data consumption outpacing even most of the developed world, from 40,000 petabytes in 2010 to 2.3 million petabytes generated in 2020. A move towards an inclusive digital economy encompasses more and more data being generated across platforms. It is no secret that organizations of all sizes are moving to the cloud — for strategic, financial, and operational flexibility and scalability. This calls for sustainable solutions that are affordable, secureand of course energy efficient for smooth management of digital infrastructure.
With existing infrastructure, the focus of many Indian companies is to optimize cost while remaining competitive, especially in these challenging times given the impact of Covid-19.
Here are some ideas that an organization can implement to drive maximum ROI from their datacenter operations.
Check data storage capacity
It is time to review what data the organization is keeping, for what purpose, and for how long. Not many organizations lay emphasis on data lifecycle management strategy,which plays a critical role in the era of digital transformation. It is also important to understand the extent to which a company is embracing digital transformation, because that will affect decisions about where and how to store data, backup, recovery, protection and archiving.
Smartly extending hardware lifespan
Do not be a risk taker and wait until the hardware completely collapses, as downtime costs are expensive. Instead, explore post-warranty and post-EOSL (end of support life) maintenance options available on nearly all server, storage, and networking components from major manufacturers. This empowers enterprises to decide on a product-by-product basis and to identify which equipment is delivering value.
Accessing additional support
Beyond a certain timeframe with OEM products, the value being offered tends to decrease with limitations such as no new features being offered and a rise in support costs. In such an environment, third party maintenance providers can be a viable alternative offering better, more responsive support and extra features while greatly reducing the cost. The benefits also include multivendor support through a single provider with contract management and trouble ticket oversight, reducing chaos and offering more efficiency.
Manage staffing and energy costs
People cost is among the largest cost elements for most datacenters in India. It is imperative for IT managers to access the annual requirements and decide accordingly if maintenance needs to be outsourced or to be managed in-house. Datacenter personnel need to have specific training and certifications in servers, storage, switches, networks, applications etc., among other IT assets. Sometimes there may even be a dearth of the right kind of personnel, which means paying a premium for capable staff.
It is advisable to manage energy and facilities costs by looking at various ways to reduce the level of cooling required. Some possible measures include proper insulation to maintain temperatures within the room, cleaning up workloads, removing unnecessary equipment and virtualizing more workloads.
Managing and operating datacenters in India can be a complex and expensive business, with the potential for costs to increase exponentially. The key is to look for smarter measures without resorting to big-bang approaches. The above-mentioned considerations demonstrate that it is possible to manage and prioritize costs while getting the best out of available resources.
(The author is Director of Product Management at Park Place Technologies and the views expressed in this article are his own)
