Migration
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Steve O’Donnell Favourite IT gadget Most influential management book IT industry figures most admired |
Steve O’Donnell, Vice President for Infrastructure Transition Programmes at Cable & Wireless, reveals how the company has tackled a global data centre consolidation programme and his tips for successful systems migration.
What are the current trends driving system
migration projects?
There are a number of key drivers, the first of which is
cost reduction. Many enterprise data centres feature not only multiple
vendor platforms but also multiple versions of the same operating
system, creating an environment that is both complex and costly
to manage. Reducing these costs, as well as improving agility and
the ability to cope with business change are the main grounds for
migrating a data centre to a new architecture.
What part of the data centre consolidation
posed the biggest challenge?
We encountered our main challenge very early on in the
project, when we began to audit our existing applications and servers.
Very few organisations truly understand the complexity and diversity
of their data centre environments, yet it is essential that you
capture this information before embarking on any migration. We
still have teams physically auditing our software licences in the
UK, and have already identified substantial duplication – and
financial savings.
How can external service providers contribute
to the migration process?
Although the data centre migration process is extremely
complex, it is very well-suited to being shared with external service
providers. There are a number of areas that can easily be packaged
up and outsourced to a partner, for example the initial audit,
server builds, racking and logistics. Computacenter provided both
logistical and engineering services to help consolidate our 2,000
servers in the UK as part of this project.
What is essential for a successful systems
migration?
Preparation. Without thorough planning, you are going to
encounter some major problems. We took a very intensive approach,
and still missed a couple of things, which we then had to fix at
the last-minute. If you understand what you are trying to achieve,
and the processes involved, you will find that the savings will
pay for the actual project. But don’t underestimate the job
at hand – we identified 120,000 tasks for just two data centre
migrations.
Which technologies will play a role in the
evolution of the data centre?
Virtualisation will become increasingly common, as it enables
organisations to simplify IT management and make better use of
their assets. Our system administrators spend 50% of their time
managing our storage infrastructure – by consolidating and
virtualising this environment, we will be able to significantly
reduce this management overhead. Utility and grid computing will
also play an important role in data centres of the future, with
grid computing being particularly useful for investment banks,
who need to process complex financial modelling calculations.
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