IT Efficiency Metrics for the Virtual Era: Survive, Grow and Thrive

Organizations want to manage fewer things – fewer technology silos and fewer points of management. Examine the metrics associated with these eight benchmarks of best-practice efficiency:

• Mix of IT spend on maintenance vs. innovation
• Servers managed per administrator
• Number of management tools & technology silos
• Help desk costs as a percent of total IT costs
• Hardware metrics (server refresh cycle)
• Server density
• Number of applications and operating systems
• Power efficiency

Next, explore these four key process steps for maximizing efficiency, from the desktop to the data center:

• Standardize: Disparate, proprietary and legacy systems can bog down efforts to operate efficiently. By migrating them to standards-based components, common platforms, open tools and a unified fabric, your organization can reduce complexity and optimize the data center infrastructure you already own.
• Simplify: Reduce or eliminate redundancies with pragmatic solutions like virtualization and storage consolidation. When your company rationalizes and reduces applications, you have the flexibility to easily remove and repurpose resources for other uses.
• Automate: When you create a uniform environment with fewer touch points, productivity can skyrocket. Learn how you can reduce manual intervention by implementing the right tools and best operational practices.
• Move to the cloud: The cloud offers the possibility of managing workloads, not infrastructure. Take a look at which applications or workloads can or should be moved to the cloud from a cost, workflow and resiliency perspective.