Companies ignoring datacentre best practice

Few businesses have a fully integrated datacentre management framework

A new report from IDC accuses chief information officers and IT managers of failing to implement new datacentre management practices that could offer many benefits.

The analyst firm acknowledged that companies are making savings from new datacentre technologies, but maintained that more could be saved by implementing new datacentre management tools.

The report claims that 25 per cent of businesses are managing their server and storage landscape manually, leading to much higher costs, while just 14 per cent have a fully integrated management framework.

"Datacentre managers are much more concerned with finding suppliers that can address security and availability problems, than with ensuring that their datacentre meets the requirements of their business," said Nathaniel Martinez, programme director in IDC's systems and infrastructure group.

"IDC believes that chief information officers need to reduce their operational cost in the datacentre and, importantly, show a stronger plan for how investment in the datacentre contributes to business success."

Jon Gasparini, principal consultant at Morse, urged companies to follow IDC's advice.

"It is not surprising to see that only 14 per cent of organisations have an integrated management framework, and it's definitely something that needs addressing," he said.

"By bringing together the different silos of management, and automating their tasks through the technology stack, organisations can reap massive cost savings. "