Maximizing ROI: The Strategic Advantages of Data Center Consolidation

Understanding the Concept of Data Center Consolidation

In the ever-evolving landscape of information technology, businesses are constantly seeking ways to optimize their operations, reduce costs, and enhance security. One strategy that has gained significant traction in recent years is data center consolidation. According to the Data Center Alliance, 62% of data centers are making consolidation efforts today. But what is data center consolidation? This process involves the integration and centralization of multiple data centers into a unified, efficient infrastructure. This can either be an on-prem or cloud data center. By streamlining operations and resources, data center consolidation offers a multitude of benefits to organizations of all sizes.

Benefits of Data Center Consolidation

Cost-Efficient Solution

One of the primary motivations behind a data center consolidation strategy is cost reduction. Running multiple data centers can be an expensive affair, involving expenditures on infrastructure, cooling, power consumption, maintenance, and more. By consolidating data centers, businesses can eliminate redundant resources and optimize their infrastructure. This, in turn, leads to substantial cost savings in the long run.

Improved Operational Efficiency

Maintaining several data centers often results in fragmented processes and disjointed workflows. Data center consolidation fosters better coordination and collaboration among IT teams, as they operate within a unified environment. This improved efficiency not only enhances productivity but also facilitates better decision-making and problem-solving capabilities.

Enhanced Security

Data security is a top concern for organizations in the digital age. Multiple data centers can lead to inconsistencies in security measures, making it challenging to enforce uniform security policies across all facilities. Data center consolidation allows for a more streamlined and comprehensive approach to security, reducing potential vulnerabilities and ensuring a higher level of protection for critical data.

The Impact of Data Center Consolidation on ROI

Direct Impact on the Bottom-Line

The most apparent impact of data center consolidation on ROI is the reduction in operational costs. As mentioned earlier, consolidating data centers eliminates redundancies, leading to decreased spending on hardware, software licenses, utilities, and manpower. The money saved can be redirected to other strategic initiatives or invested back into the business to foster growth.

Indirect ROI through Improved Resource Utilization

Data center consolidation not only cuts down on unnecessary expenses but also enhances the utilization of existing resources. With a centralized infrastructure, businesses can achieve higher server utilization rates, better storage optimization, and improved overall hardware efficiency. These improvements translate into better application performance, faster response times, and an overall more satisfying end-user experience.

Strategies to Maximize ROI with Data Center Consolidation

Opt for A Phased Approach

Data center consolidation is a complex undertaking that requires meticulous planning and execution. Instead of attempting a massive overhaul in one go, businesses should consider adopting a phased approach. By gradually integrating data centers and carefully managing the migration of applications and workloads, organizations can mitigate risks, learn from each phase, and make necessary adjustments along the way.

Prioritizing Applications for Consolidation

Not all applications are created equal, and some may have higher strategic value or resource requirements than others. To maximize ROI, businesses should prioritize the consolidation of applications based on factors such as criticality, performance, and resource consumption. This approach ensures that the most impactful applications are seamlessly integrated first, leading to immediate benefits.

Promoting Automation and Orchestration

Automation plays a pivotal role in data center consolidation. By automating routine tasks and processes, organizations can free up their IT teams to focus on higher-value activities. Additionally, orchestration tools can help manage the complex interdependencies between applications and systems during the consolidation process, reducing manual errors and minimizing downtime.

Consolidate with Disaster Recovery in Mind

Disaster recovery is a critical aspect of data center operations. When consolidating data centers, it is essential to incorporate a robust disaster recovery plan. A consolidated infrastructure should ensure data redundancy, geographically distributed backups, and failover mechanisms to protect against data loss and minimize service disruptions in case of unforeseen events.

Measuring the Success of Data Center Consolidation

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to Measure Success

To gauge the success of data center consolidation, organizations should define relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Some essential KPIs include cost savings achieved, server utilization rates, energy consumption reduction, application performance improvement, and user satisfaction levels. Regularly monitoring these metrics allows businesses to evaluate the impact of consolidation and identify areas for further optimization.

Monitoring and Maintaining Efficiency

Data center consolidation is not a one-time task but an ongoing process. It is essential to continuously monitor the performance of the consolidated infrastructure and address any emerging issues promptly. Proactive maintenance and optimization are crucial to sustain the efficiency gains achieved through consolidation and ensure a positive long-term ROI.

Real-world Examples of Successful Data Center Consolidation

To better understand the roadblocks that need to be overcome with data center consolidation, let’s take a look at a real-world example:

A furniture and home goods e-commerce company had a corporate objective to migrate all of its data out of on-premises data centers on a strict deadline. The team had moved its 40 Microsoft SQL Server hosts to Google Cloud, but they kept hitting throughput limitations. With the deadline bearing down on them, the team knew they didn’t have time to refactor and needed a way to get faster performance on Google Cloud as quickly as possible.

To help give the customer a performance boost, Google Cloud brought in Silk. The Silk Data Virtualization Platform gave the customer 0.2ms faster speeds than they had even seen on-premises. These results were so dramatic compared to native cloud performance, the customer immediately pushed Silk into production. Not only that, but Silk offered 3.2 GB/s throughput per SQL host (with up to four SQL hosts living on a single Silk instance). All performance limitations on Google Cloud were eliminated and the customer was able to make their cloud more cost efficient with Silk’s 3:1 data reduction capabilities helping them to get the most out of their cloud resources.

For more details about this retailer’s successful data center consolidation journey, read the full case study here.

Tools and Technologies Facilitating Data Center Consolidation

Data center consolidation would be a daunting task without the support of modern tools and technologies. Some key enablers of successful data center consolidation include:

• Virtualization technologies that enable running multiple virtual machines on a single physical server, optimizing hardware utilization.
• Software-defined networking (SDN) to create a flexible and scalable network infrastructure that can adapt to changing requirements.
• Cloud computing solutions that offer flexible, on-demand resources, facilitating seamless migration and workload distribution.
• Data migration tools that ensure smooth and secure transfer of data between data centers.
• Monitoring and analytics tools that provide real-time insights into the performance and health of the consolidated infrastructure.

Maximizing ROI with Silk

And if you’re trying to move applications that rely on a database like Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server, be sure to get Silk. Silk helps you get the fastest performance possible on the cloud by decoupling performance from capacity and offloading tasks to the compute layer to achieve dramatic and consistent latency reductions. The platform sits between your cloud database and storage layers, optimizing performance with no additional database changes or tuning required.

Silk helps you rightsize your compute VMs and cloud resources, so you only pay for what you need. This can help you keep costs in check, including by eliminating the need to overpay for unnecessary database licenses. In addition, Silk’s instantaneous, zero-footprint snapshots let you make copies without requiring fully-provisioned copies of data. With Silk, you can be sure that your plans to consolidate – or even eliminate – data centers will be successful for even the most seemingly untouchable workloads.

In conclusion, data center consolidation is a strategic approach that offers substantial benefits to businesses in terms of cost efficiency, operational effectiveness, and security enhancement. To fully realize these advantages, organizations should adopt a phased approach, prioritize critical applications, and embrace automation and orchestration. By monitoring KPIs and continuously optimizing the consolidated infrastructure, businesses can maintain efficiency gains and achieve a positive long-term ROI. With success stories like the retailer listed above and the support of expert partners like Silk, data center consolidation is an indispensable path to a more agile and prosperous future in the digital era.