Transforming the data center to provide better business value ranks as a high priority for CIOs this year, according to a survey done by Hewlett-Packard. John Bennett, HP’s worldwide director of data center transformation solutions, says that CIOs face two data center transformation challenges – aging facilities, and refocusing of IT’s priorities away from just managing an infrastructure. He says, “The average data center is more than 25 years old and was not designed to meet the needs of an infrastructure that needs to deploy applications on demand. Meanwhile, IT organizations need to provide an applications environment that more closely aligns with the business, and to spend more of the IT budget on business priorities, management, and maintenance.“

In this tutorial, Bennett helps CIOs to make the business case for a data center transformation based on the simple philosophy: “spend to save to spend to grow.” He says that much of the infrastructure work can be self-funding as a result of cost savings.  “However, to accomplish this, you need to do more than talk about return on investment or total cost of ownership. You also need to make sure this transformation is aligned, supported, or connected to the overall business strategy, as well as the stakeholders’ plans that comprise the strategy. Because a transformation of this type can range in the tens of millions of dollars, CIOs also need to align the project with the internal financial measurements and the resources of the business. After all, you’re competing with other projects that want some of those dollars. Even if you get approval from the board or executive management, the project won’t go as intended unless you have done your homework.”

HP has earned its bragging rights when it comes to how to handle a data center transformation. In early 2000, HP found itself with about 85 data centers around the world, along with a 1,000 server rooms, and more than 5,000 applications. Bennett says, “Every time we acquired a company, such as Compaq, we inherited more data centers.”  When Randy Mott, the current CIO joined HP, he immediately got the board’s approval to undertake a three-year IT transformation project, which included consolidating the data centers and standardizing the infrastructure.The company put three data centers in place (each one tied to a backup site), doubled storage capacity, tripled network bandwidth, and improved disaster recovery and business continuity. Bennett says, “We reduced our total IT spending from four percent to two percent of revenue. We reduced energy consumption by 60 percent, and networking costs by 50 percent. Overall, we improved our capability to execute on mergers and acquisitions. We now can assimilate or acquire an organization and make it part of HP very quickly.

Bio

John Bennett is worldwide director for data center transformation solutions at Hewlett-Packard. In this position, he focuses on helping customers transform their data centers into strategic assets that support business growth and innovation. His team helps customers adapt a new infrastructure, modernize applications and implement service management practices. Bennett has been with HP for nearly 30 years, with a career ranging from engineering through product management, product marketing and program management. Based in Massachusetts, he has a B.S. in mathematics and a M.S. in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Resources
John Bennett on Rethinking Virtualization - Odeo
Data Center Transformation – A Big Priority for CIOs in 2009 – Survey Results - Hewlett-Packard Press Release
HP Embraces New Data Center Technologies - Systems Management News

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer
Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

Sponsored by BMC Software

In this podcast, Evans also talks about the relationship between social media and CRM, and the impact social media will have on wireless technology, known as the digital swarm.

Whether you are a chief information officer or a chief marketing officer, you need to know how to leverage technology, especially social media, to understand how customers perceive your brand both positively and negatively, and what changes you need to make to your products to get more positive responses. You have the challenge of influencing 1,000s of daily online conversations you can’t control. After all, these aren’t your conversations. Dave Evans, a social media strategist and author of Social Media Marketing – an Hour a Day, says that you need to create an external social media experience that your customers will talk about in a way that invokes others to buy your products. He adds, “This is a big change from asking your advertising agency to change the message because customers’ aren’t getting it."

Evans’s social media strategy firm, Digital Voodoo, has helped many well-known companies come to grips with the impact of social media, and to recommend changes to their brand, product, or service to position it for success using external social media. Take the work Evan’s firm did for Meredith Publishing, which produces well-known magazines such as Parents, Better Homes and Gardens, and More. His firm created a strong engagement between Meredith’s individual print and online subject subscribers via the content discussions which they engaged. He says, “We gauged success in terms of page views –the base line indicator for publishers– and the size of the community as it grew over time.”

Evan’s following as a social media marketing strategist caught the eye of John Wiley & Sons. He was asked to write a book to fit into Wiley’s An Hour a Day series. Unlike other social media marketing books, Evans’  book provides a daily plan for how you can approach social media both strategically and tactically. For example, in one exercise, he tells you to go to IBM’s blog and read about the policies for selecting bloggers. He says, “If you don’t have the right social media strategy, you’ll wander all over the place. On the other hand, having the strategy right doesn’t mean you can turn the job over to the operational side of your business and say, ‘Now go to do this.’ The book allows you to select the things you want to work on.”

Bio
As a strategy director for integrated communications for GSD&M, Dave Evans gained extensively advertising experience working with clients, such as Southwest Airlines, AARP, Wal-Mart, PGA TOUR, Dial, and Chili's. Before GSD&M, Evan worked with Progressive Insurance Company as a product manager, and a systems analyst for the Voyager deep space exploration program with Jet Propulsion Laboratories/NASA.

In 1994, he cofounded Digital Voodoo to provide strategic marketing services for clients wanting to tap the power of the social Web. In 2005, he cofounded HearThis.com, a podcasting service firm focused on social media and marketing.

He holds a BS in physics and mathematics from the State University of New York/College at Brockport. He has served on the Advisory Board with ad:tech and the Measurement and Metrics Council with WOMMA. He is a columnist for ClickZ, an e-zine about social media.

Resources
Social Media Marketing An Hour A Day: Dave Evans - Online Marketing Blog
socStardom2: Social Media Marketing with Dave Evans - SlideShare
Getting Started With Social Media - ClickZ

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer
Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

Sponsored by BMC Software