Q & A
Steve Beber of TRACKIT
Strengths and assets
Data centre infrastructure management ( DCIM ) systems may have evolved over the years but there is still little focus on asset management and its importance to facilitate a robust DCIM solution . NCN sits down with Steve Beber of TRACKIT and gets his thoughts on improving visibility of data centre assets and the future of the industry .
The cost of bad data can lead to inaccurate and expensive decisions being made .
How do you view the data centre / IT infrastructure industry at the moment ?
The data centre / IT infrastructure industry remains very buoyant and is still growing rapidly with many new and inspiring technologies coming to market . However , after recently visiting a number of key industry events and listening to the problems of our prospective clients , there still seems to be confusion around data centre infrastructure management ( DCIM ) solutions . This has been caused by a lack of clarity and focus on what a DCIM solution delivers , what ROI can be expected and misconceptions around the time and effort associated with implementation .
What do you see as the strongest growth areas in the industry ?
We are now seeing more of a drive in the industry to gain better visibility of data centre assets and companies exploring technology away from DCIM to help optimise their infrastructure . This is partly because of the change in technology and continual increase in demand for many front end services . For example , in the telecommunications sector there are dramatic growth requirements through the expansion of on-demand / video streaming services and gearing up for home automation and the Internet of Things ( IoT ).
Another reason why data centre owners are looking to optimise their existing infrastructure is the focus to drive a reduction in operating costs . The industry has clearly learnt from previous technology advancements and is taking a more pro-active planning approach to utilising data centre assets fully before expanding , as previous reactive decision making had led to unnecessarily high capex . We believe this is why many organisations are also looking at options to move to colocation facilities and / or consolidation of space to help them become more efficient .
Why did you start TRACKIT ?
TRACKIT was formed back in 2008 to deliver data centre inventory and validation services . Providing data centre audits is a highly specialised service that requires a very high level of detail and accuracy but delivered quickly to ensure ongoing changes do not affect the integrity of the data . Through routinely delivering large scale data audits we found that most DCIM solutions were ( and still are ) complex , inflexible and frustrating . DCIM vendors would overlook the importance of accurate data for implementing a DCIM solutions as this was seen as something that could get in the way of selling licenses and professional services .
As a direct result , customers would then often fail to achieve the expected ROI from having purchased and implemented a DCIM solution . Once they had the solution up and running they would find that the data they have imported ( typically from a spreadsheet ), was inaccurate and out of date . This resulted in customers then blaming the solution as not delivering an accurate view of what they have ; It ’ s the old saying but put bad data in you get bad data out . I ’ m afraid this is still often the case with DCIM solutions available on the market today as they don ’ t focus or emphasise the importance of starting with the foundation of accurate data . Equally as important there is also little focus on how to maintain accurate data . So for TRACKIT stage one was developing a robust and professional service for accurately auditing customers ’ data centres . Stage two was then developing an application for easy / accurate collection of data and a methodology to maintain accurate data .
As a viable alternative to DCIM , we developed a multi-user , web enabled data centre asset management ( DCAM ) offering , TRACKIT Enterprise . Our DCAM for Enterprise solution was developed to allow everyone in an organisation to view or maintain data from their desktop . This includes a powerful reporting engine allowing customers to view their data any way they wanted .
Can you give us an overview of the solutions that TRACKIT offers ?
TRACKIT offers a flexible service , software and hardware solutions set shaped around client requirements . No single client requirement is the same and equally , there is no single off-the-shelf
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