Let’s return to our discussion of Simson. The convection purveyor began a transition to 10G in their data center recently. They considered delaying the switchover to avoid the cost of replacing all of their 1G tools with the 10G equivalents (or cost to buy additional duplicate tools), however, corporate priorities mandate the change now.
The key here is that Simson cannot compromise coverage due to tool oversubscription. Let’s assume the company owns 14 monitoring tools of various types in their data center. The capital outlay they made to purchase all of these tools was approximately $1.5M (~$110K/tool). Should they choose to buy duplicate tools, the cost would be at least another $1.2M (lower due to price degradation on the tools). Even worse, replacing all of these tools with 10G equivalents would total closer to $10.5M (~$750K/tool). In other words, the company stands to save between $1.2M and $10.5M in additional tool purchases by deploying a Monitoring Optimization solution.
Let’s look at the other side of the equation – underutilized tools. First start by assuming they decided to purchase the $1.2M in new duplicate 1G tools to help account for coverage issues on the 10G network. While their oversubscription problem would be solved, they now have 28 tools operating at 70% of capacity, at a total capital outlay of $2.7M. Simple math would tell us that they are leveraging only $1.9M of that investment, effectively wasting $800K of that investment. How many data centers can afford to spend $800K on a solution that contributes absolutely nothing?
So in summary, tool oversubscription led to an additional $1.2M in purchases and the company now has twice as many tools operating at only 70% of capacity. The unused capacity translates into another $800K of capital budget wasted. With Monitoring Optimization, Simson could have saved approximately $2.0M more by addressing shortcomings in their approach to tool utilization.
NEXT: The Productivity of the Staff Managing the Data Center
