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Customers: The New Datacenter Architects

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PCQ Bureau
New Update


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The Indian mid-sized enterprise has managed to stay relevant in times of cost cutting by customers, thanks to the price advantage it offers. The business model and competitive strategy of mid-sized enterprises has become more crucial to their survival than overall industry performance. From here, the road to growth is through specialization and better business value. Customer satisfaction is set to be the cornerstone of success for mid-sized enterprises in 2012. As they cannot afford to be different or inferior to larger players in terms of service levels, they're likely to focus on differentiating themselves and ensure RoI through a customer-focused business model. In the datacenter space, the cloud has emerged as the common denominator among technology priorities of mid-sized enterprises. How enterprises will provision and use technology in 2012, can be forecasted by a simple rule: more for less.

Cloud is the silver lining

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More and more customers would opt for the Cloud as a faster and cheaper option to migrate to an 'IT enabled' enabled ecosystem. Customers will clearly outline security concerns and expectations from the vendor through stringent service level agreements (SLA). In the consumer space, consider how iCloud was pitched to create a unique differentiator for itself among offerings from like-minded vendors. Enterprises can take inspiration from Apple and earn an early-mover advantage or technological head start by moving to the Cloud. It's about being seen as the thought leader and innovator.

Build to grow

Space would continue to be a premium commodity. Seamless product refresh, especially in the server space, would differentiate an agile enterprise from the mediocre ones. Energy efficiency would be determined by how optimally the enterprise is able to migrate to better, more efficient servers with the smallest possible footprint. Energy tariffs are only expected to go northwards coupled with an increase in energy consumption in the datacenter space. Hence, enterprises will structure their server architecture with a view to optimize energy and minimize the cascade effect of power loss in the data centre.

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Integrated, intelligent infrastructure

In line with the classic adage of 'managing only what you can measure,' enterprises will be prompted to opt for real time, integrated monitoring systems that enable them to remotely manage their active and passive IT infrastructure through a single-plane solution. Even mid-sized enterprises would experience high levels of compute activity on their servers. Hence, any deviation in workflow or redundancy levels would have to be communicated not just at datacenter level but at U-level inside the rack. Real-time monitoring and control would become must-haves and determine the preparedness of the datacenter setup.

Extreme density solutions

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Heightened compute activity in datacenters would justify investment on migrating to extreme density solutions that are more energy efficient and compact. Extreme density cooling solutions for datacenters have already made headway in the Indian market. An extreme density solution is not merely more suited to a mid-sized enterprise's objective of squeezing the most out of their IT setup, but also delivers a much quicker RoI than traditional solutions. It makes all the more sense as these enterprises move to the Cloud, as users pay only for the power they use.

Critical space management

While enterprises can be expected to opt to invest in technology over personnel, they will simultaneously lay more emphasis on critical space management as a standard BoQ of every datacenter-build SLA. This practice will help pre-empt downtime scenarios and ensure 24x7 availability to the enterprise as its very survival depends on maximum uptime and performance at lowest possible cost.

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