| | JUNE 20158CIOReviewopinionin myStrategic Data Center Ownership ­ What does it Mean?The art of strategically owning your data center can only be understood and practiced if you accept that the data center and the services therein are critical to your businesses success. When are You Not Strategically Owning Your Data Center?You are failing in the ownership of your data center if you can't call one person or group and get a complete answer to the following questions:· What is our Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)?· What do we have budgeted for the next year and how is that tied to our business plan?· What is the response time to capacity enablement in our critical geographies?· Who are all the important partners in our data center ecosystem?· What is our time to install for new gear in each location?· How are we doing against efficiency and corporate sustainability KPIs?Mark ThieleThe importance of even the abbreviated list above cannot be under estimated. If the data center is in fact critical to the company's success, then it must be answerable in real time to business needs, in all areas of need; agility, cost control, enablement of technology access, support for growth flexibility, CapEx vs. OpEx investment priorities, and sustainability objectives among othersFew companies can answer any more than two to three of the questions outlined above in anything approaching real time. Of all of the above questions, TCO and accurate business influenced budgeting are usually the two questions that can't be answered or are answered incorrectly. Let's Just Pick on TCO Capturing your TCO for the data center seems relatively straight forward. There are people, a building(s), real estate, power, maintenance costs, Strategic Data Center Ownership ­ What does it Mean?By Mark Thiele, EVP Data Center Technology, SuperNAPwater, etc. Unfortunately, only accounting for the aforementioned items leaves out some very critical areas of opportunity. How valuable is IT agility and even more importantly, how valuable is IT agility with options and cost management? What about connectivity (WAN) services. If you haven't factored your cost to acquire and risk of ownership for connectivity to your data center you're missing a huge piece of the cost and opportunity story. After you've captured all the traditional TCO measures, I highly suggest you place a couple not so obvious measures on the table (Connectivity & Agility or Ecosystem). | | JUNE 20158CIOReview
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