Seeing the Communication Gap between Data Center Teams - Design, Construction, Operations, and IT

Whenever I heard how DCIM will bridge the gap between facilities and IT I look, but question whether there is really something there that can bridge the gap.

How hard is it to bridge the gap?  Consider this video of the Oracle America’s Cup Race team Wing designer and his challenge to talk to the sailors.  WSJ has a good story on this challenge.

Do you think the answer was to install an Oracle Software solution that both would use.  No.  It took many loses to the New Zealand team to finally get the America team to try something the computer hadn’t modeled

There was little time to experiment with the new technique, and Mr. Ozanne's software indicated Oracle would easily outsail New Zealand upwind even without foiling.

Technology was a problem, not the answer.

Nobody had expected this. Had team Oracle placed too much faith in the technology? Had its enormous budget lulled the team into overconfidence? Had Mr. Spithill gotten away from the lessons he had learned in Elvina Bay?

What especially galled him was the New Zealand team's apparent contempt for Oracle's approach. The managing director of the New Zealand team, Mr. Dalton, was openly disdainful of the costly, high-tech catamaran Oracle had chosen. The Kiwi boat had a similar, but more rugged, design. Dean Barker, the opposing skipper, was the son of New Zealand businessman Ray Barker, who had founded the menswear company Barkers.

The results were achieved by challenging technology and its assumptions made by humans.  What makes me laugh is how many times people will make it seem like Technology is something magical.  No it’s not, it was created by people who just like other people make mistakes and incorrect assumptions which gets embedded in the code.

Schneider and HP partner to create the One Source of Truth with DCIM

There are dozens of teams working in a data center.  From the facilities group to the hardware deployment to the application operations and in-between there is no shortage of databases with information.  The promise of DCIM is a data center information management solution.  The question I ask is how does this work?

Schneider Electric announced a partnership with HP on DCIM.

Schneider Electric Offers Comprehensive Data Center Infrastructure and IT Management Platform Through Collaboration with HP

WEST KINGSTON, R.I. January 23, 2014 – Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management, today announced collaboration with HP to deliver a comprehensive, converged data center and IT management platform.  This platform will provide consistent views for both the facilities and IT professionals within any organization resulting in increased collaboration and efficiency. The joint solution will feature HP Converged Management Consulting Services (CMCS) combined with Schneider Electric’s Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solution, StruxureWare™ for Data Centers. Schneider Electric and HP are uniquely positioned to offer customers the ability to link physical infrastructure assets to business processes for improved holistic business impact analysis.

“By collaborating with HP to provide a holistic approach to managing IT business process assets and workloads, we are continuing to bridge the gap between IT and facilities,” says Soeren Jensen, vice president, Enterprise Management and Software, Schneider Electric. “Enabling IT service providers to instantly view the impact of any changes in their data center, as well as the operational costs associated with these changes is an important step towards improving energy efficiency in data centers and IT.”

The how is by using a CMDB as the one source of the truth and the place to reconcile information from the different sources.

Schneider Electric and HP will integrate StruxureWare for Data Centers with HP’s Universal Configuration Management Database (UCMDB) which will enable communication and reconcile asset data between the solutions platforms for DCIM and IT Service Management (ITSM). Also, HP will map the functions and features of StruxureWare for Data Centers into HP’s proprietary Converged Management Consulting Framework. This mapping will allow consultants to make informed recommendations around deployment of the solution into customer’s data centers and determine the best way to integrate the overall ITSM and DCIM systems within the environment.

The approach of using a CMDB as the integration point of DCIM information with ITSM is sound and an option that can work.  When you look at other DCIM solutions ask how will you store and reconcile the information from IT and Facilities?  If they say in the CMDB that would work.  If they say they can store the information in a Big Data environment with a NOSQL key value pair approach that could work as well.  Most would go down the path of a traditional DB.  I would choose ...

If Facebook buys CA's DCIM solution should you?

Facebook’s Tom Furlong announced that Facebook is using CA’s DCIM solution.

CA Technologies Works with Facebook to Help Drive Efficiencies and Reliability in Its Global Data Centers

CA Innovation Helps Provide Power Improvements in One of the Most Demanding IT Environments in the World

SAN JOSE, CA, January 28, 2014 – CA Technologies (NASDAQ: CA) announced today that Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) is using CA DCIM (CA Data Center Infrastructure Management) software to bring together millions of energy-related data points from physical and IT resources in its global data centers to improve power efficiency.

Facebook conducted an intensive DCIM vendor review process. CA was one of a dozen considered and completed a proof-of-concept, followed by a more extensive pilot in a 100,000-square-foot data center. Upon completion of the pilot, Facebook worked with CA to create a custom solution to deliver on the energy-related DCIM requirements today and in the future, in terms of technology innovation and CA’s ability to execute with speed and scalability, as well as working together to adjust and fine-tune associated business objectives.

“We are on a mission to help connect the world, and our IT infrastructure is core to our success,” said Tom Furlong, VP, Infrastructure Data Centers, Facebook. “We are continually looking at ways to optimize our data centers and bringing all of our energy-related information together in one spot was a core requirement.

Facebook is in top 10 of data center footprints out there, and with it comes a big budget and high visibility for those who are its suppliers.  This means there is a good chance Facebook is going to get high value from its use of CA DCIM.  

One question to ask is whether you will benefit from Facebook’s use of DCIM?  Do you run your operations similar to Facebook?  The answer is almost universally NO.  So what is the benefit of Facebook using CA DCIM to you?  Does it prove CA DCIM can scale and perform?  Maybe, do you know the hardware required to run CA DCIM?  No.  Will you?  Most likely not. 

The list of companies who can provide a DCIM solution that scales to Facebook’s need is short.  

What would be interesting to know is what other DCIM companies Facebook thought it would use and how they compared to CA DCIM.

See What is Wrong with DCIM, now what?

I have been reading more with my new Kindle Paperwhite (2nd generation).  The Kindle is working the way I hoped and I am spending more time focused on reading and study.  One book I am reading now is 

Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights [Kindle Edition]

Gary Klein (Author)

I've also been working on some operational issues and mobile software.

This morning spending 45 minutes undisturbed reading "Seeing What Others Don't."  It hit me why DCIM doesn't work for many, and what is wrong with the approach to DCIM.  Testing the concept is easy, and most would agree with my perspective.  

Now what?

Do I write my epiphany/insight in a blog post?  Nahhh.  It is too hard to write up.  I think I'll just have more fun with the idea discussing it with some friends.  Besides the solution I came up with is too esoteric for the vast majority of people.  This post was one that I liked.

Here are bunch more articles from Psychology Today by Gary Klein.

Seeing What Others Don't

The remarkable ways we gain insights

by Gary Klein Ph.D.

Painful Insights

Once a person has an insight there's no going back to the previous way of seeing the world. But perhaps there are exceptions, such as patients who gain insights in one session and then seem to 'lose' the insight the next time. Read More

Mind-Stretchers

One way to escape fixation is to deliberately view events from a new angle. This entry describes five different scenarios we can play around with, or can use to help others: The Failure scenario, the Weak Signals scenario, the Turn-the-Tables scenario, the Successor scenario, and the Switch scenario. Read More

Helping People Gain Insights

How can we inspire other people to make discoveries? Read More

Insights on Demand

Can we get in the mood for breakthroughs? Read More

Three Keys to Unlocking Great Insights

We can’t plan for insights but we can still increase our chances for gaining them. Some of the most effective tactics run opposite to our usual tendencies. Read More

Beyond Perfection

Insights can take us beyond perfection by helping us discover what we're really after. Too often, people settle for perfection — the achievement of their initial goals. But insights let us identify richer goals than the ones we start out with. We gain enlightenment about our true needs. Read More

Insights Vs. Organizations

Most organizations claim—and sincerely believe—that they want to increase insights and put them to use. We shouldn’t let that sincerity fool us. Organizations inadvertently suppress the insights of their workers and they do it in ways that are ingrained and invisible. Organizations stifle insights because of forces locked deep inside their DNA. Read More

Cognitive Roadblocks

Even with the same information, some people gain an insight and others don't. There seem to be four main barriers that cut the chances of achieving an insight. Two of them are beyond our contol, but we may be able to do something about the other two. Read More

The Different Forms of Insight

Insights come in several forms. Most research uses the impasse form in which a person gets trapped by a flawed assumption and cannot find the solution to a puzzle without discarding this assumption. A second form depends on noticing contradictions and realizing that an accepted view must be incorrect. And a third form relies on noticing connections Read More

Hopelessly Irrational or Wonderfully Creative?

Insights pop into our mind without any warning, in contrast to controlled, logical thinking. Insights provide a complement to the heuristics-and-biases worldview. Sure, we have to worry about making bad judgments. But we also should celebrate our capacity for insights. Read More

What Planet are DCIM vendors on? A Sales World

Adinfa has a blog post asking the question What planet are DCIM Vendors on?  The world is different.

And that is a big part of the problem, I think.  Too many DCIM products are over-hyped, over-priced and over-complicated.  Lots of Powerpoints, lots of conference presentations but little that is tangible and deliverable particularly when it comes down to the reality of retro-fitting DCIM into a multi-vendor data centre.  If you need to run Flash, if you need high-power graphics cards in the server, if you need permanent contractors, if you need week long training courses for users, if you try to position your DCIM product as comparable to ERP or CRM of old then you are probably missing the point.

When I think of the way vendors sell DCIM, I think of a world that is defined by the vendor sales team.  A Sales World where  you will pay all this expense and time to reach the nirvana promised in the ppt.

The Adfina post continues with what is the alternative to DCMI Sales World.

People who want to use DCIM want tools that take their pain away and make their life easier.  In this era of instant gratification, asking someone to make a case to their board for something that will take months to deploy and years to achieve RoI (based on more tangible measures than notional savings derived from those oft-quoted cost of downtime studies) is about as palatable to them as asking them to make a case for building their very own “Curiosity”.  What most data centre managers really want from DCIM is a practical software tool that is straightforward to implement, simple to navigate, intuitive to work with, browser-based (with no add-ins needed), flexible in nature and priced reasonably.  They don’t need to go to Mars for that.