How to Compare DCIM Vendors

The process of choosing the right Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software can have a significant impact on your organization’s success or failure.

With a proven track record of helping thousands of customers evaluate their DCIM options, we at Sunbird recognize the importance of making an informed decision.

We understand the unique challenges faced during the selection process, and we are committed to helping you navigate through them.

We have compiled the most common questions we get asked from organizations that are serious about evaluating their prospective DCIM vendors to select the right tool for them. Our goal is to empower you to ask the key questions that will help you find the best fit.

For each question, we have provided Sunbird's answer to help streamline your evaluation process by demonstrating how a world leader in second-generation DCIM software would respond.

Products and Licensing Questions You Should Ask

What products do you offer?

Sunbird offers two products. dcTrack is data center operations software that includes asset management, capacity planning, and connectivity management. Power IQ is an enterprise-class polling engine that collects power and environmental monitoring data. dcTrack and Power IQ seamlessly integrate to provide a complete suite of capabilities that dramatically simplify data center management.

​How is your software licensed?

dcTrack is licensed by the rack and Power IQ is licensed by the monitored device, and we offer perpetual and subscription licenses for both products.

How much does it cost?

Monthly subscription prices are $4.99 per monitored device for Power IQ, $15.99 per cabinet for dcTrack, and $23.37 per cabinet for the complete DCIM suite. Perpetual license options are also available. Learn more about our pricing.

Am I limited to the number of users, assets, etc.?

No. Our licenses include unlimited users, sites, square footage, assets, custom fields, data points, and integration points.

Are there any additional fees or hidden costs?

No. There are no costs for feature modules, use of our APIs, non-production systems for testing, or to request new data collection plugins, business rules, or reports and chart widgets.

There also no requirements or additional license and maintenance costs for pre-requisite software like additional operating systems and databases. 

How do I buy your solution?

You can purchase our solution via your preferred reseller or distributor.

Evaluation Questions You Should Ask

Do you provide a demo version I can use for evaluation purposes?

Yes. We provide full-featured demo systems that you can try for free. Simply fill out the form on the dcTrack test drive or Power IQ test drive webpage, and within moments you will receive an email with the login credentials.

Can I try it with my own data before purchasing?

Yes. We encourage our prospective customers to engage in our proof-of-concept (POC) process that enables you to validate if our solution satisfies your needs.

Can you integrate with my CMDB and ticketing systems?

“Automation via integration” is a key pillar of our second-generation DCIM vision. We help our customers reduce manual effort and improve data accuracy with system integration.

Our solution comes out of the box with fully documented bidirectional APIs and connectors that make it easy to integrate with CMDBs such as ServiceNow, Jira, BMC, and Ivanti/Cherwell, ticketing systems such as ServiceNow and Jira, and Dev Ops tools such as VMware, Ansible, Chef, Jenkins, and Puppet.

Watch Workday present how they use Sunbird DCIM to automate their data center operations.

Do you meet my scalability requirements?

“Extreme scalability” is one of the key pillars of our second-generation DCIM vision. Our solution’s polling architecture is specifically designed for big data and is field-proven to collect 500 data points per rack per minute.

Our software has been battle-tested by major enterprise customers including a social media company that collects more than 11 billion data points per day, a large telco managing 300,000 racks of equipment, and a SaaS company that performs one million daily API calls.

Ensure with your vendor the additional costs associated with additional server requirements to meet the scale of your deployment. Some customers who have migrated from competitive solutions were able to consolidate from running 10-12 servers on the competitive solution to 1-2 servers on the Sunbird platform.

Do you meet my security requirements?

Sunbird prioritizes security in its software development and deployment process. We follow best practices such as building the software on a hardened Linux OS that is downstream of a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) OS, using state-of-the-art development and testing tools that perform continuous inspection of code quality, performing regular vulnerability scanning and penetration testing, and using government-approved FIPs-compliant encryption algorithms.

Our software is trusted by banking, telco, and federal and defense agencies with the most stringent security requirements.

Who in my organization can benefit from your product?

While the benefits of Sunbird DCIM (i.e., better uptime, efficiency, and productivity) are obvious to data center managers, our solution provides value to many roles and teams and enables data-driven collaboration across functions.

Outside of data center operations professionals, the most common roles we see leveraging Sunbird DCIM are:

• Network engineers who can track all active and passive network assets and their port-level relationships, track port capacity and utilization, and visualize network documentation in 3D.
• Facilities managers who can monitor and manage facility items and gain visibility into capacity and utilization.
• Capacity planners who can get real-time insights into capacity and utilization trends, recover stranded capacity, and track all resources, relationships, and dependencies.
• Server, storage, and system admins who can view all data center assets and capacities, proactively resolve issues, and manage their inventory of parts and spares.
• C-level executives who can realize fast ROI and cost savings due to increased resource utilization, energy efficiency, productivity, and uptime.

Do you offer multi-language capabilities?

Yes. Our GUI can be localized to English, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, and Turkish.

How do you handle user permissions?

Sunbird provides granular, role-based access control for user management. This allows administrators to specify what individual users or groups can and cannot see and do within the system. Users can be granted or restricted access at every level from locations, rooms, and racks down to individual assets and custom fields.

We offer comprehensive authorization and identity management with support for any identify provider that supports SAML 2 (e.g., OKTA) for single sign-on, any LDAP-compliant lightweight directory, and Microsoft Active Directory.

​How will you provide a return on my investment?

Typically, we find that a Sunbird DCIM deployment can pay for itself in a year or less by:

• Increasing your rack power utilization by up to 40% and deferring capital expenditures for expansions
• Integrating tools to increase the productivity of people
• Reducing energy consumption to save energy costs and support sustainability initiatives
• Increasing the accuracy of asset information with built-in auditing
• Maintaining uptime to save on the cost and lost productivity of downtime
• Consolidating tools to improve productivity and reduce costs
• Enabling faster and more informed planning and provisioning

Read our eBook 7 Ways to Quantify the ROI of DCIM Software to learn more details.

We also have calculators that can help you estimate the ROI of deploying Sunbird. Try the ROI calculator to estimate your cost savings based on improved productivity and try the rack calculator to estimate your ROI based on recovered stranded capacity and deferred expansions.

Do you have any customer testimonials or case studies?

Yes. Our customers love sharing their success stories. You can read our customer reviews, browse our case studies, watch our webinars with customer panelists. For the highlights, read our eBook Top 10 DCIM Software Customer Success Stories.

Can I speak with an existing customer to learn about their deployment?

Yes. We have many customers who are happy to discuss their use cases and experiences with Sunbird DCIM. Let your account manager know that you would like to speak to a reference customer, and they will identify a customer that shares your industry, region, or use cases that you can speak with.

Do you incorporate user feedback into your product roadmap?

Yes. We love collaborating with our customers to create a solution that simplifies data center management for them. Through user groups, workshops, and deep customer interactions, our end users provide input about their use cases, and we collaborate with them to ensure the solution resolves their pain points.

Check out the Paddy Power Betfair case study where they say, “The Sunbird team feels like part of the family. You’re not a number. You are, in fact, along this journey with Sunbird, and they’re along the journey with Paddy Power Betfair,” or the F5 case study where they say, “There are a lot of features that are in dcTrack today that we have requested. Sunbird took our needs into consideration and produced practical solutions.”

Deployment Questions You Should Ask

What deployment options are available?

Our application software, database, and hardened Linux operating system are fully tested and ready to load on VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, Linux KVM, approved hardware appliance, and Amazon Web Services.

Alternatively, our solution is available as a hosted software-as-a-service (SaaS).

​How long does it take to deploy?

“Super-fast deployment time” is a key pillar of our vision for second-generation DCIM software. We make it easy to get started with data import templates, a built-in smart model templates library, support for existing Visio and AutoCAD floor maps, and service offerings including quick start services, asset audits, data migrations, and product training.

We have experience helping many enterprise-class customers deploy our solution. While the software can be downloaded and installed quickly, enterprise customers with hundreds to thousands of cabinets of equipment can typically expect to have the software fully populated with data and be managing the system on their own within two to six months.

How long will it take to migrate the data from my existing tool?

We have helped customers switch from every major commercial DCIM tool you can imagine, and we have found that most data migration projects are completed within two to six months.

What kind of documentation and user manuals do you provide?

We provide everything you need to have a successful deployment including a user guide, online help guide, API guide, quick setup guides, integration guides, and more. We also maintain a comprehensive knowledge base on our customer support portal featuring hundreds of “how to” and training videos.

Support and Services Questions You Should Ask

Do you provide professional services and support?

Yes. We have a 100% insourced professional services and support team that regularly earns a 95%+ customer satisfaction rating.

Our service offerings include quick start services, asset audits, data migrations, and product training.

Our technical support team is available via chat, email, or phone to assist with configuring, installing, maintaining, and upgrading our software.

Do I need to buy services?

No. The decision is entirely up to you, but we typically recommend at least some initial services to speed up the return on your investment.

What is covered in the annual maintenance contract?

A valid annual maintenance or annual subscription contract provides you access to our customer support portal and addons site which unlocks:

• New releases. Upgrade to our latest releases to get more features and enhancements.
• Ticket management. Open tickets and see the status and history of all your tickets.
• Chat. Get your questions answered in real-time by our online support agents.
• Knowledge base. Search for help and answers to your questions.
• Training videos. Watch “how to” videos and become an expert.
• Community forums. Access forums, see announcements, and engage with your peers.
• New feature requests. Submit new features to our product and development teams.
• Model templates library. Download the latest model templates every month.
• Addons. Download additional plugins, reports, dashboard charts, and business rules.

How often do you provide new releases?

We typically provide two major releases for both dcTrack and Power IQ every year plus periodic maintenance and security releases. This ensures customers are always gaining new functionality and security enhancements.

How long does it take to upgrade to a new release?

It only takes about 30 minutes to upgrade using the self-installing .bin file that is available on the customer support portal for each new release.

Is there an extra cost to upgrade to a new release?

No. All new releases are available for customers with a valid maintenance contract.

Are there any training programs available?

Yes. Remote and onsite training options are available.

We offer training hours as a professional service for both system administrators and day-to-day end users. Learn more details in our services brochure.

For customers with valid maintenance, we offer hundreds of training videos on our support portal so you can learn at your own pace about the features most important to you.

Every Wednesday at 12pm ET we host Free Training, a webinar series open to all customers. This provides you with the opportunity to get a deep dive into a specific topic each week and ask our support staff and engineers any questions. These are recorded and uploaded to the support portal.

Also open to all customers are our user group and workshop programs. We host several online user groups every year to provide early look demos of new features in development and new release training. Our online customer workshops also meet several times a year where customers present how they are leveraging Sunbird DCIM. Workshop topics have included ServiceNow integration, automation, asset auditing, dashboards, business rules, and more.

Are there any addons?

Yes. We have an addons site where customers with valid maintenance can download hundreds of additional plugins, reports, dashboard charts, and business rules. Customers with software maintenance and support can also request new addons to be created by Sunbird with no additional surcharges.

Bringing It All Together

Not all DCIM solutions are created equal.

When evaluating prospective DCIM vendors, ask questions that will help guide you towards a provider that will partner with you and focus on your success.

Sunbird is a leader in second-generation DCIM software because our product is easy, fast, and complete, and we have built a reputation for delighting customers.

Try Our Award-Winning DCIM for Free

Want to see for yourself how why the best data center managers use Sunbird? Get your free test drive now.