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It provides zero-configuration analytics in which pre-built dashboards , charts , reports and visual analytics for the most important data centre KPIs are available out of the box . Shared dashboards and team views enable data-driven collaboration and smarter decision-making .
Second-generation DCIM comes with free APIs and connectors that make it easy to drive automation via integration with other tools . It offers extreme scalability that can handle millions of assets , billions of data points per day and thousands of users .
Other key pillars of second-generation DCIM are that it offers full a suite of capabilities for complete data centre management , it is vendor-agnostic and works with virtually all third-party meters , sensors and software , and it leverages AI and Machine Learning capabilities to help optimise the data centre .
What tools can be integrated with second-generation DCIM ?
Second-generation DCIM features free APIs and customer-configurable connectors that enable integration with most other tools that have the appropriate APIs . This automation via integration eliminates double entry and reduces manual effort .
For example , integration with VMware helps data centre managers easily identify and track server resources that support VMware virtual machines .
Integration with CMDBs such as ServiceNow , BMC Remedy , Ivanti / Cherwell and even homegrown systems is also popular . Customers can exchange asset information between their DCIM tool and nearly any application that exposes their REST APIs . In many cases , this integration can become operational within an hour .
An exciting new type of integration is with ticketing systems . If an organisation already has a ticketing application such as Jira or ServiceNow that they use to track their data centre changes and incidents , they can now push those automatically to their DCIM to initiate the workflow process . The tickets can also be automatically updated from their DCIM . This drives automation like automatically closing the ticket once the work is completed .
Leading data centre professionals are also utilising DevOps tools like Jenkins and Chef to integrate their DCIM software with applications like Jira , Slack and Splunk . They are automating everything from provisioning and orchestration to parts management to back-office processing . The possibilities are endless .
How do you quantify the RoI of second-generation DCIM ?
The most modern data centre managers in the world use second-generation DCIM to maintain uptime , increase the efficiency of capacity utilisation and improve the productivity of people . There are many ways to measure the Return-on-Investment ( RoI ) that they are seeing .
With their first-generation DCIM tool , Paddy Power Betfair had 5 to10 users . After they switched to second-generation DCIM with greater reporting capabilities and data democratisation , colleagues outside of the data centre team wanted access to their system . Now , they claim 80 – 100 users , about a 900 % increase . The data centre team is now further elevated in the organisation .
Users of second-generation DCIM also report greatly improved accuracy of their assets and connectivity . To confirm an asset ’ s location , they no longer have to either physically visit the data centre , wait on slow and clunky first-generation DCIM , or rely on manual and error-prone spreadsheets . Second-generation DCIM enables an always-accurate view of what ’ s in the data centre and where it is . With modern DCIM , Metronom spends 90 % less time checking equipment and UF Health Shands improved asset tracking efficiency by 50 %.
Organisations are also significantly reducing operating expenses by identifying and utilising stranded capacity . By getting the most out of their existing resources , they can defer buildouts of new server-ready cabinets that cost US $ 15 – 20,000 each . Customers are achieving this by leveraging Auto Power Budget , a second-generation DCIM feature that automatically calculates an accurate power budget number for each make and model instance of a device based upon the actual measured load of that device in its environment running its applications . With this feature , Comcast gets 40 % more utilisation out of its existing resources . eBay can deploy projects with 33 % fewer cabinets , saving it US $ 120,000 in a single project .
Finally , data centre managers are leveraging secondgeneration DCIM to help meet their corporate sustainability goals . For example , Vodafone uses DCIM to accurately measure , monitor and document the environment and power telemetry in its data centres . It is then able to intelligently implement strategies like raising cold aisle temperatures to save large amounts of energy and money . �
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