DCIM Software: What Is the Risk of Not Making This Investment?

Investing in Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software is critical for modern businesses to efficiently manage their data center resources.

Without DCIM software, organizations lack comprehensive visibility into their data center infrastructure, making it challenging to identify and address issues promptly, leading to potential service disruptions. Moreover, the inability to effectively understand current infrastructure utilization and plan for future growth can hinder business agility and competitiveness in today's fast-paced market.

In this blog post, we will explore the risks of operating without DCIM software, consider the cost of DCIM software in the context of overall data center expenses, and discuss why DCIM software is a sound investment from risk mitigation, ROI, and modernization perspectives.

The Risks of Operating Without DCIM

Using the wrong tools to manage your data center poses risks to:

• Uptime. Downtime can have severe implications on business operations, leading to loss of revenue, damage to reputation, and decreased customer satisfaction. DCIM software minimizes the risk of downtime by providing proactive infrastructure monitoring and capacity management capabilities. It offers real-time visibility into critical infrastructure components, detects potential issues early, and enables prompt action to prevent or mitigate downtime events.
• Efficiency. Without real-time data insights, resource allocation in the data center can be inefficient, leading to underutilization or overprovisioning of resources. DCIM plays a crucial role in optimizing space, power, cooling, and data/power port utilization. By reporting and analyzing data on infrastructure resource capacity, DCIM software helps identify inefficiencies, leading to cost savings and more efficient critical facility operations.
• Productivity. Manual tasks and troubleshooting processes consume valuable time and resources, diverting attention away from strategic initiatives and core business activities. DCIM software automates routine tasks and streamlines workflows, freeing up staff to focus on higher-value tasks. By automating asset management, provisioning, and monitoring processes, DCIM enhances productivity and enables teams to respond faster to incidents and changes in the data center environment.
• Planning. Without accurate data, capacity planning and scaling can be challenging, leading to under or overprovisioning of resources and potential bottlenecks. DCIM software facilitates informed decision-making by providing accurate and up-to-date data on resource utilization, capacity trends, and future requirements. Through forecasting and what-if analysis capabilities, DCIM software helps organizations anticipate future needs, optimize resource allocation, and plan for growth.

Comparing DCIM Costs to Other Data Center Expenses

Prices vary for different DCIM solutions and depend on the vendor, licensing model, volume, and other factors. For this exercise, estimate that an annual subscription for a complete DCIM software product costs several hundred dollars per cabinet per year.

Compare that to other common data center costs:

• Colocation. Colocation data centers costs are at an all-time high. Costs can vary greatly depending on the location, power, bandwidth, and pricing model, but a single rack in a colocation data center may cost around $2,230 per month, or over $26,700 per year.
• Server-ready empty cabinet. A single server-ready cabinet typically costs between $15,000 and $20,000.
• Rack full of servers. A rack full of servers can easily cost upwards of $1 million assuming 20 servers at $50,000 each.
• Cloud. Most enterprises spend more than $1 million every year on cloud services. Companies with more than 1,000 employees spend between $2.4 million and $6 million a year. The rising cost of cloud providers is a leading cause for the cloud repatriation trend, where organizations are migrating off the cloud to on-premises infrastructure.

If your organization has substantial data center costs and significant data center infrastructure, doesn’t it make sense to spend a small fraction of that on a modern tool to help manage it?

Making the Case for DCIM Investment

Risk Mitigation

Managing a data center without robust DCIM software poses significant risks.

Overall, the risks associated with managing a data center without DCIM software underscore the critical importance of investing in the right tools to mitigate these multifaceted threats and ensure the smooth and secure operation of the data center environment.

• Operational risk mitigation. DCIM software helps maintain uptime, increase efficiency, and boost productivity. Organizations without a modern data center management tool are likely at an increased risk of unplanned downtime, stranded capacity and energy waste, and productivity losses that can lead to delays in rolling out services.
• Reputational risk mitigation. Lacking a modern DCIM solution can lead to operational disruptions and inefficiencies that tarnish brand reputation and erode trust among customers.
• Compliance risk mitigation. DCIM software can provide the data needed for compliance reporting. Without it, organizations risk failing to meet regulatory and sustainability compliance requirements which can lead to fines and legal challenges.
• Security risk mitigation. Modern DCIM software enhances physical security and protects sensitive information with granular, role-based access control. Not having a DCIM tool potentially creates physical and data security vulnerabilities that can lead to reputational damage and financial losses.

Cost Effectiveness

For many, the cost of DCIM software compared to the potential costs of downtime and inefficiencies without it more than justify investing in a tool.

Leading DCIM vendors will offer flexible licensing options, all-inclusive features, extreme scalability, and transparent annual maintenance contracts that include new releases, support, model templates library updates, and addons (i.e., charts, reports, plugins, and business rules).

Plus, the ROI of DCIM software is often fast for a variety of reasons such as increased utilization of existing resources to defer capital expenditures, increased productivity due to system integration and tool consolidation, reduced energy consumption, and better uptime.

Operational Modernization

Outdated methodologies and tools to manage data center environments often lack the capabilities needed to effectively handle the complexities of modern data centers.

To stay competitive, it is imperative for organizations to rethink their use of homegrown tools, point tools like Excel and Visio, open source tools, or Generation 1 DCIM tools and embrace modern Gen2 DCIM software.

2^nd Gen DCIM offers real-time insights, automation capabilities, and scalability, enabling businesses to optimize resource utilization, streamline operations, and respond quickly to changing demands.

By adopting DCIM as a central component of their critical infrastructure management strategy, whether that infrastructure resides in data centers, IDF closets, or edge sites, organizations can enhance agility, reduce risks, and position themselves for success.

Bringing It All Together

Adoption of DCIM offers strategic value by enabling organizations to proactively manage their critical infrastructure, optimize resource utilization, and drive innovation.

The long-term benefits of DCIM adoption include cost savings, improved operational efficiency, scalability, and agility to support future growth and development.

Want to take the next step towards optimizing your data center operations with DCIM software? Get your free test drive of Sunbird’s world-class DCIM software now!