* How data center consolidation leads to cost savings
In our most recent research on enterprise security, we discovered an interesting correlation between the cost of patch management and the number of locations housing servers, rather than the number of servers. Against our intuition, even very large companies with thousands of servers could manage their patches with a few people – as long as the servers were centralized.
Having multiple locations means having IT staff widely distributed also, which leads to increased operational costs. Data-center consolidation, a trend we have been following for a few years, has the effect of reducing costs by concentrating resources at a few locations. The natural extension to this trend is the zero-footprint branch. The goal is to move as many of the systems that are at the branch office to the data center, and thereby reduce the need for local IT staff.
As you move toward a zero-footprint branch office, you can create significant savings in operational costs. But you also reduce the complexity of the infrastructure by accelerating consolidation of resources into the data center. As your employees access more of their information and communication resources remotely, your reliance on the WAN increases, which can be a downside, particularly without the appropriate network-optimization tools in place. But the cost and complexity of maintaining ”mini data-centers” at each branch office, in many cases, can be much higher than the cost of redundant WAN connections and high bandwidth.
Some of the services and systems migrating from the branch office to the data center:
* E-mail and enterprise applications. Already centralized in most enterprises, e-mail and various business applications are housed in the data center. If you were able to save money by consolidating such applications, the other suggestions below may make a lot of sense.
* Voice systems. Replace small PBXs, key systems and analog circuits with IP PBXs hosted in the data center. Benefits include standardization of services, improved access, improved utilization of storage for voicemail and lower toll costs.
* Storage and file services. Replace small file servers with Wide-Area File System gateways, HTTP based file access (WebDAV), remote CIFS or NFS servers. Using caching, compression and offloading the “chatty” aspects of the file protocols means you can move the file services and storage back into the data center while still maintaining LAN-like performance. Coupled with NAS gateways that emulate file storage on a SAN, block storage infrastructure can lead to even more savings, reduction in complexity and lower management costs.
* Facilities management. In some cases, security alarms, lighting and environmental controls (air conditioning and heating) can be monitored and managed remotely. Consolidating all the information and management systems in the data center allows you to reduce the cost of leased circuits, remove local management systems and establish energy-saving processes consistently across many locations.
IT complexity is increasing and the branch office may begin to look like a mini data-center. To save money, consider moving many of the branch office systems into the data center and beefing up the WAN to maintain the same level of availability and performance.
