What is the market need for Data Center Transformation Solutions?
Daniel Aw(DA): According to a recent research study done by HP, awareness of a looming data centre crisis is on the rise. In fact, more than one third of CEOs and CIOs believe that in two to five years, their data centres will be incapable of dealing with the rapidly growing demand for services and applications.
Today’s CIOs are also increasingly expected to deliver on three business imperatives: accelerating business growth, lowering cost and reducing technology risk to the business.
In today’s business environment, data centre transformation solutions provide practical ways to overcome data centre sprawl, aging facilities, energy and capacity limitations, operational vulnerabilities and the technology constraints that plague today’s data centres and limit tomorrow’s growth and flexibility.
What has customer adoption been like for DCT solutions? Is this different throughout the APJ as compared to U.S.?
DA: What we are seeing today is a change in data center thinking – because of business priorities, companies are aware that any key IT initiatives they embark on should drive business value and IT efficiency at the same time.
What is different now is that the market trend is moving towards re-evaluating the data centre in redefining cost drivers. This more strategic view of the data centre means there is a need for a more holistic approach to data centre transformation initiatives.
Although customer adoption of data centre solutions has been growing worldwide and through the region, the key barrier appears to be a lack of understanding of how data centre transformation can benefit organisations. For many enterprises, moving towards the next-generation data centre means being equipped with technology tools and strategies they need to deliver on these top data centre initiatives – energy efficiency, automation, virtualization, consolidation and business continuity.
What is EYP MCF (Mission Critical Facilites), what do they do and what is HP’s value proposition with the acquisition of EYP MCF?
DA: EYP MCF is recognized as an engineering service and consulting firm dedicated to strategic planning, analysis, design and commissioning and operations of critical facilities for enterprises.
Together with EYP, HP now has the broadest portfolio in the industry of hardware, software and services for data centre transformation.
New strategic, end-to-end data centre transformation services now span facilities and technology, including strategic planning, design, transition, education and onsite support as well as IT as a service.
The services complement our Data Centre Services and energy-efficiency solutions. The new consulting, design and operational support services further help customers transform data centres from physical assets with growth constraints into strategic assets for innovation.
With the acquisition of EYP, HP will launch three new services enhancing HP Critical Facilities Services portfolio – Critical Facilities Consulting, Critical Facilities Design and Critical Facilities Assurance. These services are designed to help enterprise customers manage the lifecycle of their critical facilities from planning, design, building and operations.
Critical Facilities Consulting (CFC) provides high level strategic and tactical planning for data centres and other highly redundant facilities. It helps the customer answer a few basic questions such as how many data centres are needed, the location of the data centers, what size and redundancy should these data centres be, and the cost of the data centers.
Critical Facilities Design (CFD) provides a basis of design, concepts and full design through stamped and sealed construction documents which are then delivered to a construction manager or general contractor to construct the facility. Using sophisticated modelling, statistical tools and design methodologies, a solution that balances issues such as reliability, scalability, maintainability, schedule and cost will be provided to the customer.
Critical Facilities Assurance (CFA) services verify, from an operational perspective, the inherent high-reliability performance of the design through periodic peer reviews during the project’s design development phase, as well as through commissioning following new construction or site modifications.
This extensive services portfolio further enhances HP’s leadership position in the industry.
How will these services differentiate HP from competitor offerings?
DA: Together with EYP, HP now offer customers a more encompassing strategic, end-to-end approach to creating dynamic computing environments -- built from the ground up to be flexible, energy efficient and manageable.
HP’s Data Centre Transformation Solutions now span all key data centre domains such as facilities, infrastructure, applications and information management/operations. For each domain, HP provides full lifecycle services, including data centre strategy, planning, design, transition, operations, continuous improvement, education and on-site support.
HP is also dedicated to delivering innovative power and cooling solutions—such as Dynamic Smart Cooling and Thermal Assessments with 3D Modelling—which are now complemented by EYP’s expertise in data centre design and energy-efficient operational continuity.
What is the business outcome customers can expect from these new HP and EYP services?
DA: As data centres become “global” regardless of location, ability to serve global customers is of increasing importance.
Customers can benefit from reduced cost, mitigation of risks and increased growth.
For instance, customers can benefit from savings resulting from facilities consolidation, resulting in scalability of data centre helps grow businesses, which needs to be available 24x7.
What is the go-to-market plan for HP and now EYP services?
DA:HP Services has been delivering similar data centre design and build services prior to the acquisition of EYP. With the acquisition of EYP, HP is able to enhance our Data Centre Services offerings and go-to-market as a key services provider to customers building enterprise and large critical greenfield data centres.
Critical Facilities Services (EYP) is available in all APJ countries with a key focus on China, India and Japan markets.
Can customers leverage EYP services for the Data Center Consolidation Services?
DA: With EYP services, HP is able to offer a complete Data Centre Consolidation offering from facilities to IT Infrastructure and applications. Critical Facilities Consulting (CFC) portfolio from EYP offers our customers high level strategic and tactical planning for their Data Centre Consolidation plan to decide on how many data centres they need, the most effective location, the physical size and topology (level of redundancy) and estimate the cost to perform all the above.
What is the difference between the Critical Facilities Services and the Data Center Consolidation Design Services?
DA: HP’s Critical Facilities Services, resulting from the recent acquisition of EYP Mission Critical Facilities complement its extensive Data Centre Services and energy-efficiency solutions. The new consulting, design and operational support services further help customers transform data centres from physical assets with growth constraints into strategic assets for innovation.
DCC services may encompass the need for critical facilities services (for example in designing and overseeing the building of a new data centre).
How can customers use Mission Critical Services and what enhanced offerings will this bring?
DA: Many large enterprises have multiple data centres running multiple servers and operating platforms. Unused capacity, redundant functionality, inefficient or outdated designs, an ever-growing number of assets, and aging servers make these environments complex and expensive to manage and maintain as well as difficult to scale. In addition, power costs are rising steadily, leading to exorbitant electric bills and the need to reduce costs while maximising energy efficiency.
These HP Data Centre Transformation services provide customers with an opportunity to modernize facilities, consolidate, virtualize and address many pending data centre issues that were impossible to address in old aging buildings through innovative outsourcing. For example, some opportunities with consolidation and moving to a newly designed facility through outsourcing or an in-house solution are:
• Consolidation to provide better service, enhance systems management and improve agility
• Energy efficiency: Data centres are the biggest consumers of electricity. In new facilities, power and cooling issues are addressed and up to 40% savings can be achieved.
• Reducing the number of sites through virtualisation allows for greater choices in consolidation through rationalization. |
