Bringing data center management and technology
into the 21st century Jonathan Koomey, Ph.D.
Research Fellow, Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, Stanford University
http://www.koomey.com Presented at DCD Converged
London, UK November 19, 2014
1 Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014
Can you answer these key management questions?
• How many servers do you have? • How many of the servers are comatose? • What is the average utilization for those that
aren’t comatose? • Do you track costs and benefits from data
center operations each year? – Total? – At the business unit level? – At the project level?
Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014 2
Most companies can’t!
3 Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014
What do executives need to know about information
technology (IT)?
4 Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014
Modern businesses can’t succeed without IT
5
Brynjolfsson, Erik, and Andrew McAffee. 2014. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company. [http://amzn.to/1gYHEGk]
Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014
However…
6 Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014
IT is almost invariably fragmented and divorced from
business performance Only management can fix that
7 Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014
Almost all enterprise data centers are paragons of inefficiency, but management doesn’t know it, so
they don’t fix it.
8 Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014
Inefficient IT increases costs, decreases revenues, AND
reduces the rate of innovation
9 Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014
What can management do?
10 Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014
I. Tie IT performance to business performance
11 Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014
How?
12 Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014
Metrics!
13 Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014
Creating the right metrics is not as easy as it sounds
14 Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014
How far are you from this?
Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014 15
ProfitsComputation
= (Revenues - Costs)/Computations
Complexities • Some parts of IT are really cost centers, but
some generate revenues • Hard work needed to build up to revenues
and costs/computation – Activity based costing (Romonet) – Detailed cost and inventory modeling (Apptio) – Server based inventory and operations (DCIM)
• Computations – first order estimate = utilization * GHz * secs/year
(good enough to start)
Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014 16
Metrics drive organizational change
• Focus on the whole system – reducing total costs per computation – increasing total value from computation
• “Show back” the consequences of choices to every employee, then “charge back” if needed
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for management include both costs AND benefits
17 Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014
You need a model of costs and revenues that tracks all
components in the data center over time!
18 Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014
II. One boss, one team, one budget!
19 Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014
III. Use IT to transform IT
• Standardized IT deployments • Move from “sit down restaurant” to “buffet
style” IT • Move many users to internal or external cloud • Software should matter more, hardware less • Measure, experiment, learn, and replicate • Use computer modeling to anticipate effects
on cooling/power of ∆s in existing facilities
20 Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014
Conclusions
• What management can do – I. Drive institutional change using metrics that
tie IT performance to business performance – II. One boss, one team, one budget – III. Use IT to transform IT
• Summary: Make IT serve the business!
21 Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014
IT should NOT be treated as a cost center, it should be a cost reducing
profit center that also improves corporate and customer
environmental performance
22 Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014
For more details on the ongoing (Nov 10 to Dec 12, 2014) online class titled Data Center
Essentials for Executives, see http://goo.gl/K4kJG2
Also see my 2014 article titled Bringing
Enterprise Computing into the 21st Century: A Management and Sustainability Challenge
http://goo.gl/WYFBjb
23 Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014
Watch Dean Nelson (eBay) talk about how companies can turn IT
into a profit center (35 mins): https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=h6NJpHgReE8&feature=youtu.be
24 Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014
A case study of a company that has been successful at tying its IT performance to business performance
Schuetz, Nicole, Anna Kovaleva, and Jonathan Koomey. 2013.
eBay: A Case Study of Organizational Change Underlying Technical Infrastructure Optimization. Stanford, CA: Steyer-Taylor
Center for Energy Policy and Finance, Stanford University. September 26. [http://www.mediafire.com/view/8ema554a2ho9ifj/
Stanford_eBay_Case_Study-_FINAL-130926.pdf]
25 Copyright Jonathan G. Koomey 2014