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
