I've been in Santa Clara for the past there days hosting our data center social, hanging with friends, and meeting new ones. I was talking to a company who just bought a DCIM license and they asked what I think about DCIM. The problem with DCIM software is it is not designed for someone to say "I used DCIM every day to run my data center." DCIM is most of the time positioned as a management reporting tool.
I've been so busy meeting I haven't had a chance to read the press releases and other news this week. One of the news I got a chance to discuss is the DCIM solution for Digital Realty with one of their executives, but I didn't get the PR stuff cleared, so let me just chat about the press release.
One of the people I have had the pleasure of having hours of conversations with is DRT's David Schirmacher who makes the following statement.
"Up until now, data has been collected, but it has not necessarily been easily accessed or arranged in an intuitive manner that is helpful to a data center operator," said David Schirmacher, senior vice president of portfolio operations at Digital Realty. "The goal in rolling out EnVision across our global portfolio is to give our customers a common database that is structured around the specific needs of data center operators and can therefore manage the millions of data points that are found in today's large-scale facilities.
I was making my point about problem of DCIM without knowing that David makes the same point with the EnVision solution.
There are some good people and I am looking forward to see and hear about Digital's progress.
The EnVision rollout will begin this month and take approximately 18 months to complete across Digital Realty's global data center portfolio, which consists of 122 properties in 32 markets as of April 26, 2013.
I was talking to one of my friends and he said I should write a critique on DCIM SW on what works and what doesn't. Not. It takes too much time and there are too many analysts making money telling others how great a variety of DCIM sw is.
My other issue with the analysts writing about DCIM are they not operations people, so they are basing their analysis on what someone tells them. They don't know what good operations SW is. I would talk to people who actually use the DCIM sw and hear what they say. The prettier it is the more suspicious you should be. Don't talk to the executives who made the original purchasing decision as they will tell you their perceived expectations of DCIM. The realty is a totally different world that few know about. And it is not pretty.
I have my opinions of what I would buy. And, there are different rules on what to look for then is it pretty. Like does it scale and what are the performance limits. How is the DCIM SW designed for high availability? You can always make something with good internal design look pretty. But ugly internal designs will just worse over time and use.