Data center technologies expert and Green Field Software founder Shekhar Dasgupta has proposed a new supplementary scorecard to Balanced Scorecard, to measure IT efficiencies in data centers. He shows how next-gen data centre software should build a role-based framework to achieve organizational objectives and goals.
Mr. Dasgupta, a former Oracle Managing Director in India, recently spoke at the Data Center World meet in Las Vegas. He presented a new set of measures that go well beyond raising efficiency of IT infrastructure paving the way for leaner and greener Data Centers. These measures could improve performance and revenue besides reducing costs and environmental impact.
He urged them to treat power, space, cooling and networks as an integral part of data center. Data Centers are designed to be fail-safe with multi level back up in power, computers, networks and air-conditioning virtually turning them to be energy guzzlers. It is estimated that data centers consume over 2 per cent of utilityproduced electrical power in the United States and European Union.
A new breed of Multi-Tenant Data Centers, set up to address the Cloud infrastructure environment, together with tens of thousands captive data centers is leading to an unprecedented 15 per cent power consumption each year, Mr. Dasgupta said. As large consumers of power CIOs have a role in mitigating risks to the environment.
Just as Balanced Scorecards had a profound impact on driving overall economic value of enterprises that use them, Mr. Dasgupta suggested that Data Centers can be better aligned with business goals through Scorecard-based Data Center Infrastructure Management software. Absence of monitoring and lack of proper measurements or key performance indicators (KPIs) are the principal causal factors of Data Center failures, inefficiencies and wastage.
Rising power consumption compounded with escalating energy prices, makes it important to measure and manage power use through Building Management Systems and DCIM software.
