What is DCIM – Central
Our objective with “DCIM Central” is to create a central resource for decision makers and build a community of interest around data center automation/optimization and the “Carbon Smart” data center.
Data Center Infrastructure Management is a key emerging area in Data Center Automation. Information for decision makers is spread across multiple locations and can be difficult co consolidate. From analyst views, vendor solutions, and regulatory changes it can be difficult to keep up with such a rapidly changing area.
What is Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM)?
Data Center Infrastructure Management, or DCIM, is an emerging set of software tools and solutions to help data center operators by providing automation, management , monitoring and predictive modeling of datacenter facility resources.
This includes power management, physical floor space management and electrical infrastructure. Data Center Infrastructure Management fills a key gap, connecting facilities resources with traditional datacenter management, enabling comprehensive Data Center Automation and modeling.
Power management is becoming an increasing concern for data center operators as governments expand their carbon-emmisions regulations beyond hard industries such as oil and gas to the broader set of larger corporations resulting in potential direct taxes to the business. DCIM solutions promise to provide the analysis tools to effectively predict and manage carbon emissions to the benefit of the business.
Data center optimization is an ongoing effort. Data center costs continue to be a key expense of many companies Today and a competitive advantage or disadvantage depending upon the industry. Some corporations have moved aggressively with data center automation projects, others struggle with managing with paper and process as the picture for automating the datacenter has remained incomplete. DCIM solution offer the promise of connecting providing the data and infrastructure necessary to complete viable data center automation projects.
The solution vendors in this area vary greatly in maturity and solution-scope. Few of the major IT management vendors have offerings in this area, and we are seeing new entrants on a regular basis.
It wasn’t until earlier this year that this category was formally recognized by industry analysts as an area that corporations and data center managers should be investigating as part of their overall automation strategy. Reports from Garter and Forrester start to highlight DCIM as a critical investment area for data center operators.