The Dell Difference

Soaring energy prices have hit business where it hurts: in the bottom line. Because power is often the single largest data center operating expense, executives are searching for ways to increase the cost-effectiveness of IT infrastructures, often by upgrading to equipment designed for high energy efficiency. Still, unless performance per watt increases or energy prices decline, data center power and cooling costs are likely to overtake hardware costs in many organizations.

At the same time that executives are under pressure to cap data center power consumption, they are facing exponential growth in demand for processing power and data storage capacity. Exacting service-level agreements also create pressure to heighten system availability and resilience. In addition, legacy data centers usually lack the proper design, build, infrastructure, or location characteristics to support emerging regulatory and business requirements. For many organizations, these factors mean only one thing: additional data centers.

Unfortunately, additional data centers compound IT power costs and add complexity to already-complex global enterprise networks. In some cases, data center expansion follows merger or acquisition activity, which brings the extra complication of integrating heterogeneous and sometimes overlapping software environments.

Server consolidation can begin to address the problem of climbing data center power costs and complexity. But containing server sprawl is just a first step. Enterprises also need to confront the issue of efficiency within the overall IT infrastructure.