• Physical inventory, floor layout and data center space measurements
• Invoices or internal charge backs for space, power, maintenance and Internet connectivity
• Current and planned WAN architecture
• Network bandwidth analysis reports
• Disaster recovery and business continuity requirements and plans
• Security, remote hands, and up-time requirements
• Equipment life cycle management policies and practices
• Planned capacity growth as well as up coming projects and equipment procurement budgets
• System architecture, data base counts and sizes, along with SAN and data storage requirements

The As Is analysis builds an understanding of the current state, identifies quick wins and surfaces hidden assumptions.  To Be activities allow assumptions to be changed as the team identifies best practices, validates the technology, verifies business requirements, checks for consistency and ensures the desired milestones are realistic. Working closely with client staff, the team will work to establish the To Be vision or desired state of the following:

• Center counts and location(s)
• Center infrastructure improvements and scaling options
• Optimized power, cabinet and floor layout
• Technical tools and architecture
• Production and operations support policies and procedure
• Networks and communication
• Server platforms and virtualization
• Data storage platforms and technology

Technology professionals need to maintain a balance between space, power and cooling against the increasing demands of doing more with less. An assessment is designed to help operations managers and senior leadership establish a current base line as well as a To Be vision.  Wheather that vision involves expansion, consolidation, relocation or simply optimizing the current situaion, a data center assessment will establish the road map for achiving that vision.

Need help with your data center infrastructure? Contact theData Center Solutions experts at Metagyre, Inc. Data center management to data center consolidation putting business value in the data center.

Data Center Management: Is An Assessment Needed?

Partnering is not a new sales term for the old cost-focused customer verses supplier management battle. Partnering involves working collaboratively with vendors. Its intent is to distribute business and technology risks to the partner who can most successfully manage those risks. Success involves both partners, the customer and the vendor, realizing benefits once shared business objectives are met. Those business objectives are defined in terms of desired outcomes rather than specific deliverables or traditional service level agreements (SLA). In a successful partnership, the relationship itself is an asset with value to both parties.

To realize success, data center managers and vendors have to embrace a greater degree of openness, communication, and trust. Partnering involves the customer and the vendor working cooperatively to identify optimum solutions. Partnering can succeed only where there is a mature approach to relationship management and where effort and commitment, from both parties, are invested to make the relationship work. Partnering should never be regarded as an easy option.

Like most changes in an enterprise, successful partnering starts with the senior management team placing the full weight of their positions behind the desired relationship and agreeing on clear objectives. This commitment includes assigning the best people to create and maintain the relationship over a multi-year engagement.  Additionally, significant resource requirement commitment must be made to the partnering arrangement. This commitment includes staff and investment capital that may not pay off for several years. In a partnering relationship, the vendor must be willing to expose profit areas in open dialogs with the customer.  Customers must be expose current and future budgets as well as the process for acquiring corporate funds.

While partnering is a powerful tool for data center managers, it is not suitable for every situation. It is most appropriate for activities where there is a need for:

• continuous innovation to address changing business needs over an uncertain future
• staff flexibility with specialized skills and knowledge
• outsourcing business processes or technology services in order to free internal staff to focus on core areas
• development of a new service or system

Conversely, partnering is much less successful when there is a requirement for:

• short-term, stop-gap fixes
• little flexibility in the approach
• tight control by the customer
• activities with limited ability to improve processes or provide innovation
• the vendor to take on an unmanageable risk

In the practical sense, managing a partnering agreement comes down to the customer-vendor relationship. Both parties need to consider how they will build trust, share risk, agree on accountability, and share success. There has to be continual conversations focused on reasonableness. How will success be demonstrated and compromise achieved without the burden of an overly taxing bureaucracy?

Establishing a partnering approach requires both parties to openly discuss what they want and need from the contract. In the early stages, dialogs between the customer and vendor about goals are unlikely to align well. Throughout the process, each party will face compromise and need to stress their willingness to remain at the table in a collaborative fashion.  Without setting a negative tone, an exit strategy should be developed from the outset. Both parties need to understand what is at stake and how the contract will end successfully as well as prematurely.

Establishing a meaningful relationship requires cultural and behavioral changes. Trust is earned through positive demonstrations over time. There will be a steep learning curve for the staff of both parties. Climbing this curve translates into having the right people in place. These people need to be able to make difficult decisions and have the authority to remove staff and obstacles which are hindering the relationship. Where customer and vendor staff are working together, peer relationships need to be established. Throughout the chain of command the partnering relationship must be reinforced. Initially, if the people will not change, change the people.

One consideration to be addressed throughout the chain of command is: how open should each side be with the other? Questions to consider include:

• Shared incentives – are increased savings or revenue for the customer translated in to a profit sharing opportunity for the vendor?
• Project control board – will there be active involvement from senior management from both parties in controlling scope, managing progresses toward goals and resolving issues? Are both parties represented as equals?
• Shared problem, issue and risk logs – will there be a single set of shared records for activities tracked and addressed by both parties in order to avoid duplicate efforts and focus shared resources on a single set of activities?
• Staff reporting – how will roles and responsibilities for managing staff be defined, regardless of affiliation? Who will direct resources and assign tasks?
• Open project accounting books – are both parties invited to review the projects accounting books? Will everyone see budgetary constraints and cost considerations of each business decision in the project life cycle? Is everyone able to see value for their money without focusing on the lowest cost?
• 360 staff & management feedback – will both parties contribute to the feedback loop? How will staff and managers discover what is missing and close the gaps?

The main advantage of this openness is the ability to raise issues much earlier and address them with a shared sense of ownership and responsibility. Resolving problems earlier, when they can be more easily solved, avoids unnecessary costs, time and blame.

While all partnering arrangements start with a contract there is usually a “partnering charter” as well. The charter states desired outcomes and goals that complement the terms and conditions of the contract. Creating a partnering charter usually identifies the principles, attitudes and ideals of the partnership. The charter will also set the level of openness and the code of behavior. It should be consistent with the procurement practices of both parties.

Once the contract and partnering charter are in place the relationship work begins. A series of team building activities need to take place with active involvement from everyone from both parties, including senior management. These exercises will express to everyone the incentives for both parties as well as the expected behaviors which will deliver these incentives.

If all this sounds simple, it can be. There are also common pitfalls. One of the most common mistakes is to have individuals in crucial roles that are not suited to partnering. Most often interpersonal skills are more critical than technical understanding. Organizational maturity is another area often needing to be strengthened. If either organization is missing the cultural maturity to make partnering work, the changes required by may be out of reach regardless of how clear and achievable the benefits. When objectives are unclear, no amount of effort will make the relationship successful. One of the more difficult components of partnering is the articulation of adequate performance measurements. Finding relevant benchmarking measures that make meaningful comparisons between current and desired outcomes can be hard to achieve.

How do you know if your enterprise is ready for a partnering relationship with a vendor? The first step is to take an honest look at your enterprise and ask:

• how has the enterprise worked with vendors to date? Are vendor relationships aimed at driving to the lowest price? Are vendors viewed as adding value? Is there a shared responsibility for success? How is the enterprise viewed in the vendor community?
• is the right leadership in place with the skills and capabilities to work with the vendors collaboratively? Is the management style of the enterprise matrixed with shared responsibilities or siloed and highly controlling?
• has the enterprise clearly defined desired successful outcomes? Are measurements used in current projects to course correct? Are project targets and milestones currently published to all levels of the enterprise?
• is change easily instilled in the enterprise? Is there a successful track record of change within the enterprise?
• are mistakes viewed as opportunities to learn? Are defects found in testing viewed positively or considered a problem? Is quality about capturing metrics or improving outcomes? Is constructive criticism used to improve the process?

Assuming the relationship can be created successfully, will stakeholders ‘sign up’ to it and add momentum to its development? What kind of vendor could manage the risks envisioned to be allocated to them? Realistically, would a vendor be willing to take on the risks? If so, can the enterprise give the vendor sufficient control so that they can manage those risks?

Selecting a vendor who will become a partner means establishing goals that are compatible and achievable to mutual benefit of both parties. The selection of the right partner is not at the expense of an open competitive selection. The final choice of a partner is based on mutual benefit, cultural match, risk management and value over the life of the agreement.

Partnering is not right for every customer, vendor or engagement. At the very least, considering a partnering relationship allows data center managers, project managers and vendors to seriously evaluate their respective strengths and weaknesses as well as the risks and rewards at stake. Under the appropriate circumstances, partnering can deliver significant value over the length of the relationship for both parties.

Need help with your data center infrastructure? Contact theData Center Solutions experts at Metagyre, Inc. Data center management to data center consolidation putting business value in the data center.

Data Center Management: Partnering For Success

• Taking advantage of Moore’s Law and increasing capacity through appropriate hardware life cycle management
• Receiving increased value on purchases through solid vendor management practices
• Evaluating future business demand and scheduling appropriate capacity
• Internally developing a service catalog along with a service centered organization
• Outsourcing non-value-add or business differentiating components
• Are considered an internal business partner rather than a cost center

As operational organizations improve and build an enabling enterprise infrastructure, they begin to account for both mandatory and discretionary components.  Most companies recognize that components evolve from discretionary into mandatory infrastructure components.    Mature operational organizations use this evolutionary time period to their advantage.

An example of this evolution is  Internet Messenger (IM).  IM is at a stage where many  companies treat it with a try and see attitude.   There may be an HR usage policy, a firewall rule or two or even a corporate IM server.  However, there are few enterprises that have established an OLA (operations level agreement) equivalent to IM’s older bother, email.  During this period while the service is under the service umbrella of best efforts, mature organizations develop component specific practices for Tier 1, 2 and 3.  They capture metrics and build a technical capability in preparation for a components evolution.

Just as email worked its way into the business fabric, IM is becoming a standard tool in the business arsenal and as such is moving from the discretionary spending bucket to the mandatory operational service delivery catalog.

Effective operational organizations keep the lights on for mandatory components, improve overall operational efficiency and effectively evolve discretionary components.

Need help with your data center infrastructure? Contact theData Center Solutions experts at Metagyre, Inc. Data center management to data center consolidation putting business value in the data center.

Keeping The Lights On, In A Lights Out Data Center

In spite of the difficulties and all the complexities, many companies are reaping the benefits of offshore outsourcing. Successful companies are seeing lower costs, employee resources freed for additional projects and a flexible work force that can scale to changing business demands. But these companies are not achieving positive results on their own.

What separates the successful from the outsourcing bust, cultural understanding and project managers who understand how to bridge technical and cultural gaps. Outsourcing is same around the world, assume the problem is communication based and that you are the cause of the breakdown. Clearly articulate (read document) the requirements (read everything you expect) and go over them again and again. When you think you’ve communicated everything clearly, have the offshore communicate it all back to you. Keep on this cycle until you hear from them exactly what you said.

As data center opperations managers inherit more and more production software developed off shore, understanding how to manage the process that ensures high quality is critical.  To find out more about managing outsourced project read Metagyre’s offshore outsourcing methodology.

Need help with your data center infrastructure? Contact theData Center Solutions experts at Metagyre, Inc. Data center management to data center consolidation putting business value in the data center.

Offshore Project Management for Data Center Management