Dr Michael Braungart, one of the two minds behind the Cradle to Cradle concept, encourages individuals and business consumers to classify physical products according to whether they are consumed (eaten) or used, as in providing a service. He classifies the vast majority of manmade items that are frequently viewed as consumer products as services. The washing machine, for example, is a service provider. We use it for a certain number of washes and we expect a certain level of performance from it. That is why washing machines in a Laundromat are of a higher quality than household ones – they are expected to deliver a different level of service.In the past – bizarrely – technologies, including software, that were designed to make life easier were also designed and sold as a product governed by the hardware and technological infrastructure that supported it. After computing the inefficiencies in this delivery method the IT crowd have, like Braungart, been turning products into services. Ancient principles of real property law that previously governed peoples’ rights over the use of space and goods are being forgone for licensing-type arrangements. Which means there is no need for a company to devote physical space to house this IT equipment. This means taking responsibility over the assets that house business processes can be avoided. The new datacentre is no longer simply a bunch of cables, racks and apparently essential technology housed in controlled environments – from the end-user’s perspective the new data storage and processing facility is housed in a virtual smile.
The turnaround in datacentre service
Service from a datacentre collocation provider and service from vendors of traditional datacentre equipment and service providers has always been important. Previously smaller and mid-size businesses rented space in a datacentre or held their own small disconnected server rooms and were largely responsible for the internal fit-out and configuration themselves. Larger companies would generally build their own datacentres to work with industry specific processes and applications. This meant that they needed in-house expertise that managed and often commissioned the physical infrastructure of the datacentre to get the service they required.
Without going into a lot of detail and using unnecessarily complicated IT-speak (the word ‘architected’ for example need not feature), there has since been a revolution in the way technology is devised and delivered to both large and small organisations. It is centred on service. In essence business software, and the supporting hardware and infrastructure, is now being designed to respond to the needs of the business – rather than a set up that requires a business to adapt its processes to suit a particular set of applications.
British Telecom (BT) has proven the benefits of a service-oriented approach within its own walls. It has implemented what is called ‘service oriented architecture’ (SOA) over all its IT systems, which has helped them move away from a hardware centric set up, and through a new Matrix method allowed it to close down 1500 internal systems. The impact on hardware has been significant with over 10,000 hardware devices being made redundant and the matrix system becoming ‘one of the key contributors to the BT goal of reducing its UK business carbon footprint by 80 percent’ (compared to 1996).Capital vs Operational Expenditure
In the past, IT departments were not expected to, and generally took zero responsibility for, the ongoing operational costs of their decisions. In a McKinsey report, Revolutionising Data Centre Energy Efficiency, authors note that the increased cost of setting up a datacentre had started to get Board attention – with total costs of running datacentres (when taking into account operational costs, labour for management, servers, etc.) at around a quarter of IT expenditure. This is a lot to spend on something that is not one’s core business. IT departments started to pay attention and certain IT approaches such as SOA, ameliorated the cost burden.
Arising at the same time and tapping into the same service-oriented ethos are another group of products including ‘Software as a Service’ (SaaS). Purchased and used largely via internet connections, it allows companies to scale up or down their software usage without having to install software to their own servers. SaaS is a part of or runs alongside, a new concept called cloud computing. Where rather than installing their own IT infrastructure, datacentre or enterprise platform, large businesses can lease access to someone else’s via the ‘cloud’ of the internet. This has resulted in datacentres being sold as a service. As long as all the information can be accessed, and the processes that people require to communicate and function as a business are available in a timely, secure fashion, the physical space or location the information is coming from is not important at all.
Global heavyweights such as HP, BT and Verizon are offering real alternatives for large companies not wanting to outlay on new datacentres. While businesses such as salesforce.com and Amazon S3 have built primary business offerings from the ‘cloud’, other companies are looking at outsourcing infrastructure requirements to them. Amazon is not alone in buying up unused infrastructure (including so-called ‘dark fibre’ that has been laid but lain dormant) and plans to sell services on the back of it. China and other developing countries in the region are expected to increase capacity demand for datacentres, prompting companies to set up new facilities specifically designed for cloud requirements such as IBM in places like tech-savvy Korea nearby.
Datacentres still need servicing
While some companies will outsource their infrastructure, companies that retain datacentres will have kept them in house for a reason. Either they are supplying services to others or they need a category of service that can’t be outsourced. Operationally still the biggest concern for datacentre managers is still cooling. David B. Loman, President, Data Clean Asia Pte, a company that provides cleaning services for datacentres, says these days multinational clients are also looking to save energy costs and they know we offer products and solutions for their datacenter that will help to save cooling costs and improve airflow. He cites a successful example “One customer went from 8 CRACs to 4 cutting their cooling energy in half but still maintaining ASHRAE recommended server inlet temperatures. Saving energy and saving $$$ is very important in everyone’s mind today.” According to Loman “everyone seems to be in the same boat as far as cooling issues. It’s a worldwide problem”. But the cloud may offer some shade. If everyone uses the cloud, the infrastructure connecting a datacentre facility becomes far more important than the facility itself – meaning that so long as the connections are up to speed, moving datacentres towards poles to take advantage of air cooling in cold climates might be one way to address the problem.
Service versus price
In certain areas people are willing to pay for service, good service. In other areas they are not and in Asia what people will pay may be different to elsewhere in the world. Generally, says Loman, the primary concerns for companies looking for co-located datacentre space are reliability and security. “Everyone is looking for 99.9999 uptime and therefore they want the co-lo that can provide the best availability” and the way they manage their infrastructure. However in other respects “price is king and quality, craftsmanship, and professionalism are all secondary to price. It is especially tough for cleaning a datacenter environment”. So the news for companies providing datacentres as a service or services to datacentres is mixed.
Goodbye in house hello to mega datacentres
It is not the end of the world for datacentre managers looking after physical infrastructure in house. Yes, it appears there will be fewer in house datacentres in the future but whether the trend will hit Asia and Asian businesses before the next IT architectural revolution is hard to say. For sure, though, datacentre requirements for both storage and processing overall is only going to increase and it looks as though the mega datacentre will be the trend in the near term. For experts and suppliers that can handle large-scale deployment this is great news as the Asian datacentre boom approaches. To use the washing machine analogy, there will be a lot more people using the Laundromat. And the Laundromat with the best of service will win.
