November 2008 - GDCM® Improves Data Center Vision

When it comes to data centers, there’s an abundance of accuracy in the adage that says if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. Lee Moreton and Robert Neave know that drill. Prior to founding Global DataCenter Management, or GDCM, in 2003, Moreton and Neave were data center managers for UBS Investment Bank (Perot Systems Europe). While in the process of evaluating solutions for UBS, the pair found that many of the available tools were inadequate or lacked the functionality necessary to properly manage the facilities and systems in a data center. Moreton and Neave set to work on designing nlyte, a data center management solution.

When it comes to data centers, there’s an abundance of accuracy in the adage that says if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. Lee Moreton and Robert Neave know that drill. Prior to founding Global DataCenter Management, or GDCM, in 2003, Moreton and Neave were data center managers for UBS Investment Bank (Perot Systems Europe). While in the process of evaluating solutions for UBS, the pair found that many of the available tools were inadequate or lacked the functionality necessary to properly manage the facilities and systems in a data center. Moreton and Neave set to work on designing nlyte, a data center management solution.

“Clearly, one of our unique aspects that separate[s] us from our competitors is our source matter expertise,” explains Daniel Tautges, president of GDCM (866/949-4326; www.gdcm.com). “We weren’t founded by software developers trying to solve a problem they didn’t really understand or businessmen trying to make a quick return. We were founded by data center professionals that struggled every day with trying to manage a dynamic data center with tools that were not adequate for the job. Their approach to solving data center issues was based in reality, not developing ‘neat’ features that have little or no operations value.”

Vision That Isn’t Vexing

GDCM’s nlyte software suite provides data center managers with a comprehensive view of their managed assets and provides automated solutions for typical management tasks, as well as for the enforcement of standard processes and procedures. According to Tautges, the software allows changes in the data center to be models before implementation to determine their impact on power, cooling, and space allocation. Companies using nlyte can intelligently manage their power consumption, shrink their carbon footprint, and drive down costs by optimizing infrastructure.

Common sense might suggest that software this powerful would be highly intricate to install and implement, but Tautges says it’s truly “off-the-shelf” software. “Many of the competitive offerings in this space require extensive and expensive professional services to get it installed and configured properly. With nlyte, the product installs quickly, and loading data is a snap through the use of automation and bulk load utilities. Even large data center deployments can take less than 30 days,” he says.

GDCM also places a heavy emphasis on the importance of legacy integration, and nlyte 5.0 adds open service bus architecture to support several integration options, including Web services, open APIs, built-in workflow, and direct connectors for database-to-database integration. The suite also supports rich data connectivity between a wide range of enterprise applications and includes off-the-shelf connectors for live energy consumption monitoring, BMC Remedy, and HP/Peregrine AssetCenter.

In April, GDCM released nlyte Express, which is specifically geared to support the requirements of medium-sized data centers with between 50 and 200 racks. “At this size data center, manageability and cost are a major concern. The management of the data center is complex to the point where spreadsheets and Microsoft add-ons are neither dynamic nor robust enough to model changes and optimize critical resources like power, cooling, space, and network connections,” Tautges says.

Power On The Rise

According to Tautges, GDCM’s software helps to drive down data centers’ costs in a variety of ways, and for good reason: The cost of providing quality IT services for an organization has more than doubled over the past eight years as unchecked server sprawl and rising energy costs have caused operating budgets to balloon.

“The explosive growth in data centers and the amount of electricity needed to power them is not just an American phenomenon; it’s an emerging worldwide crisis,” Tautges says. “Let alone the fact that a typical American data center needs more and more electricity each year to power new server and storage gear of increasingly higher density. In addition to the energy problems resulting from poor planning in the face of increasingly scarce energy resources, the implementation of energy-hungry new technology only serves to compound the problem.”

For example, he says, implementing new technologies such as blade servers requires significantly more power for the same amount of space previously occupied by older technologies. He adds that the energy efficiency of servers has become a primary concern for both small and large companies as advances in server technology in recent years have placed increasing demands on power and cooling.

“IT management is under extreme pressure to implement changes to reduce these operating costs before they break the bank. Runaway energy costs adversely affect IT management’s ability to deliver new applications, maintain consistent service levels, and upgrade and implement new technology by stealing the percentage of the budget used to fund these initiatives,” Tautges says.

Looking Ahead

In five years, GDCM has compiled an impressive customer roster that includes DHL, ProQuest, HBOS plc, Scottish and Southern Energy, and others, and the company continues to cultivate productive partner relationships with IBM and HP. Looking ahead, Tautges says that future releases of nlyte will extend the real-time monitoring capabilities of the current version (v5.0) and provide management dashboards for visualizing trends in data center problem areas before they truly become unmanageable.

“We don’t see the data center energy issues going away any time soon, and we expect that more and more pressure will be brought to bear on corporations to reduce their carbon footprint and use energy more efficiently,” Tautges says. “Federal and state regulations are expected to drive compliance issues for the corporate data center, particularly with regard to green IT initiatives. In a down economy, companies aren’t looking to spend money on new projects, let alone [on] new data centers, so stretching the useful life of existing data centers and equipment will resonate favorably with IT management.”

http://www.processor.com/editorial/article.asp&guid