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Avoid wasting time andmoney procuring DCIM
Matt Stansberry, Director of Content and Publications Uptime Institute
December 2015
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The Global Data Center Authority
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Agenda • 2015 Data Center Industry Survey: Focus on DCIM• DCIM Deployment Problems• Defining Requirements • Evaluation Methodology
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SCENARIO: Large Financial Company• Sent out a lengthy RFI: Developed a set of questions and asked vendors to provide answers.
• 14 qualified vendors: 40 people on each two hour conference call.
• 12 months later, still can’t get comparative or uniform pricing information. Vendors hiding the costs in the variability of the professional services fees.
• Narrowed field down to single vendor – but hearing negative information in the market.
• Running out of time – losing the budget by end of year.
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Survey Demographics: 1,000 end users
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DCIM Market Penetration
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Do you expect a return on investment in DCIM within two years?
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Why is ROI on DCIM so terrible? • Procurement and deployment take too long• Many organizations are not getting what they need from a single tool or vendor
• Pricing volatility, lack of value assigned to the market• Total costs of DCIM are hidden, undocumented, and under-represented
• Buyers use DCIM to replace existing facilities management functions.
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How long did your organization spend evaluating DCIM systems before making a purchase?
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How long did your organization spend deploying DCIM from purchase to full functionality?
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DCIM Provider offers ten modules or functions
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You want three
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And you really want this one feature…
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Approximately how much did your commercial DCIM software cost, including installation and setup services?
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Which DCIM features are we using?
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DCIM Deployment Nightmares Lessons Learned
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Global colocation provider • Colo’s SALES execs made the purchase of DCIM tool for $US 1M.
• Facilities team doesn’t use the systems. Instead, rely on previously installed BMS and other subsystems. No operator value.
• “We’re paying for a dashboard. We should have spent the money on infrastructure to upgrade a site.”
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Large transportation company • One year into implementation of large DCIM Vendor
• Should have been an easy transition due to legacy DCIM investments, but many functions still not working
• Owners had asked the vendor for reference customers or other users to troubleshoot integration issues with for over a year, with no response
• Planning to minimize reliance on the installed DCIM tool and start over.
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Embracing the Best-of-Breed • Large U.S.-based financial firm started adopting multiple point products from various DCIM suppliers.
• Picked products that offered significant savings potential for individual projects.
• Focused on the business benefit, forced the vendors to sell you on the business benefit.
• Built a custom integration with an in-house app dev team.
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DCIM EvaluationMethodology
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Appropriate DCIM Buying Triggers
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How to procure DCIM and achieve ROI• Define project goals and objectives: If data is not actionable it is irrelevant
• Document stakeholders, decision-making process, schedule, requirements, and workflow
• Document existing management and monitoring tools, and identify gaps between current assets and goals/requirements
• Assign a value (budget) and develop RFP
• Evaluate qualified responses with a holistic and consistent methodology
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Uptime Institute FORCSS Index
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Conclusions• DCIM Procurement is risky, takes a long time, and often provides no return on investment.
• Some organizations are seeing success -- those organizations are tying the purchase into a business decision.
• Many organizations are struggling to deal with poor DCIM implementations
• We are available to help!
© 2015 Uptime Institute, LLC
Matt StansberryDirector of Content and Publications, Uptime Institute
Questions?
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