ChannelVision Magazine July-August 2016

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Enterprise spending on software-defined infrastructure (SDI) is picking up
steam in 2016, and that is likely to drive adoption of SDI-enabling datacenter in-
frastructure management (DCIM) software, according to 451 Research.
Today, the role that the physical datacenter plays in SDI, including facility
design and operational management with DCIM software, is often overlooked;
“however, this will change,” says 451.
As IT organizations virtualize more networking and compute resources, they
must also make datacenter resources more flexible in order to achieve the maximum
agility and efficiency promised by SDI. And that is where DCIM comes into play.
DCIM platforms, says 451, enable not just the operational management
of datacenters but also the automation of key datacenter resources, such as
power and cooling.
In a 451 Research survey of more than 630 IT managers, 37.6 percent said
they had deployed DCIM, and another 10.3 percent were in pilot deployments.
Among organizations that have already adopted DCIM, nearly half, (46 percent)
has also deployed SDI. Incidentally, slightly more than half of all the companies
surveyed expected spending on DCIM to stay about the same as in 2015, while
about one-third planned to increase their DCIM spending in 2016.
Although SDI adoption rates are low, they are growing, and with them grows
the promise that SDI will change the way IT designs, manages and operates data-
centers. In order to realize the full benefits of agility and lower TCO, argues 451 Re-
search, IT will have to extend SDI initiatives to the physical datacenter and DCIM.
“Virtualizing only IT resources optimizes just the top layers of the stack,” says
the research firm. “The underlying physical datacenter resources – power, cool-
ing, space – must also be tightly coupled to IT demand and resources, and auto-
mated via DCIM and other tools.”
Get Ready for DCIM
Martin Vilaboy
Editor-in-Chief
Tara Seals
Contributing Editor
Percy Zamora
Art Director
Berge Kaprelian
Group Publisher
Rene Galan
Associate Publisher
Jennifer Vilaboy
Production Director
Beka Business Media
Berge Kaprelian
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Neil Ende
General Counsel
Jim Bankes
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Source: Arketi Group
Industry analysts
Internal colleagues
Vendor face-to-face meeting
Vendor website
Case studies or
customer testimonials
Vendor comparison charts
Industry/professional online
communities or forums
Live or in-person demo
Web searches
Tradeshows and
conferences
42%
40%
40%
40%
36%
32%
31%
31%
29%
28%
In-Use (Not Including Pilots)
In Pilot/Proof of Concept
Planning to Implement in the Next 6 Months
Planning to Implement in the Next 12 Months
Planning to Implement in the Next 24 Months
Not in Plan
37.6%
10.3%
2.8%
6.2%
7.2%
35.9%
DCIM Adoption Plans
Source: 451 Research
Verizon’s Quarterly Mobile Voice Service Revenue, $M
Source: 451 Research, company records
$2,000
0
$4,000
$6,000
$8,000
$10,000
4Q12 1Q13 2Q13 3Q13 4Q13 1Q14 2Q143Q14 4Q14 1Q15 2Q15 3Q15 4Q15
LETTER
6 CHANNELVISION | July - August 2016