Data Center LifeCycle Management

A Comprehensive Solution for the Life of Your Data Center

The Data Center Resurgence

Data centers have seen a widespread resurgence in recent years, marked by rapid growth and new demands on their capabilities. This resurgence is driven by a number of business and technological factors. Postrecession budget constraints are finally ending. Clustering technology, high-density servers and virtualization have led to a ten-fold increase in power requirements. Heat dissipation has become a growing issue, along with increased security concerns. Better bandwidth allows more remote computing, but adds another layer of complexity to managing and developing data centers.

24x7, global economy. At the same time, companies can realize major cost savings through data center right-sizings and consolidations. Merger/acquisition activities have created the need for broad-scale integration. In addition, governance is making greater demands on data centers in terms of compliance, archiving, data management and security. Lastly, to ensure disaster recovery and business continuity, todays data centers have to support recovery, back-up and redundant systems, as well as remote operations in different geographical locations.

The data center is the most expensive real estate a company owns and business success depends on data center reliability and capacity. Todays data centers represent a hugely complex and critical problem set, with a whole new generation of challenges to confront and only a handful of competent, acknowledged service providers for data centers are available.

Data Center Services

Current service providers specialize in one of three areas the IT infrastructure, the physical layer or relocations. Each provider interacts with a different set of stakeholders, with no common point of integration and with different agendas. While this disconnected approach may have worked in the past, it does not meet todays needs.

The Result?
Usable, surplus data center space is now all but gone. Any remaining space must be redeveloped to meet growing needs, and greenfield data center build-out is on the rise.

Why Now?
Companies are starting to run IT like a business, and businesses are more IT dependent than ever before because of the transactional, Web-based,

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Designing the Adaptive Data Center
The Adaptive Data Data Center The Adaptive Center
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Data Center needs to be constantly adapting to changes in the business and infrastructure.

The Right Answer

The right answer is an end-to-end solution incorporating every aspect of the data center life cycle, all integrated and managed through consistent process and ownership. This requires the best-of-breed IT infrastructure, physical and relocation services all under a single banner. We call this Data Center LifeCycle Management (DCLM). Data Center LifeCycle Management (DCLM)

Business Strategy

Business strategy drives application requirements.

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Underlying IT Infrastructure

IT Infrastructure requirements dictate Data Center design.

Changing business needs, new application developments and IT infrastructure advances all happen too quickly for yesterdays data center to successfully manage and accommodate. In fact, the entire life cycle of the data center, the technology within it and the business it supports must be brought into synchronization. Over-building is cost prohibitive and building only to meet immediate needs doesnt account for future growth. Todays data center must be adaptive to the quickly changing demands of business and technology.

Application requirements define the underlying IT Infrastructure needed.

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Data Center LifeCycle Management Services
DCLM is comprised of four services modules, all backed by our Project Management Office solution: Data Center Analysis and Planning Provides a detailed analysis of an organizations current and future data center needs, including an accurate inventory of the computing and network infrastructure, application mapping and a roadmap of projected future computing needs. This information is then compared to the current physical infrastructure and the clients budget, goals and objectives to determine the recommended course of action, whether it be retrofitting of current facilities, building a new one, or relocating to a third party facility. Design, Build and Commission Executes the design and construction recommendations from the Data Center Analysis and Planning service in a modular approach. This enables companies to commit only the capital necessary for the short term and grow their facilities as their IT infrastructure needs expand. Also, intense testing and certification ensure that data centers are operating optimally from the outset. Relocation Plans and executes data center relocations, consolidations and migrations. Data center moves are infrequent and specialized events. Collective has more than a decade of experience managing these moves, from the relatively simple to the incredibly complex. The companys trained and experienced project management teams coordinate all facets of data center moves and offer a single point of contact for the customer. Periodic Data Center Evaluation Quarterly updates to the high level data center strategy. Also serves as an early warning for future changes to the data center that will be required.

Data Center LifeCycle Management Service Offerings

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Collective Leadership in Data Center Solutions
Collective is a recognized leader in data center solutions, providing: More than 5 million consulting hours of complex IT infrastructure services over the past 12 years. The Data Center Lifecycle Management (DCLM) solution takes advantage of this extensive IT infrastructure expertise to create set of proven, process-oriented services that help companies navigate through missioncritical changes in their data center environments. Our highly capable and certified Collective professionals, including IT infrastructure experts, senior managers and Project Management Professional managers ensure each project is delivered ontime and on-budget. Partnership with major technology providers, including industry leaders such as Dell, EMC, HP, Microsoft, NetApp, Sun and Symantec/VERITAS. Security clearance coordination through our Field Security Officer (FSO), ensuring full security compliance, including Federal Government relocations.

Your Benefits with DCLM

Every Collective DCLM solution is carefully designed to Provide a holistic, comprehensive, long-term view of the data center which integrates the requirements of facilities managers, IT and the businesses they support, both now and throughout the complete life of the data center Optimize the IT infrastructure with solutions that can scale and adapt to meet the ever-evolving challenges of business Incorporate the appropriate Data Center Lifecycle Management partner to meet each customers unique and point-in-time needs Ensure that every change-event project is effectively managed through an organizational and project management structure with appropriate levels of authority Deliver change-event plans that work effectively and efficiently within the current and planned data center facilities, IT infrastructure and related business organizations Deliver IT and facilities infrastructures that are modular, flexible, and costeffective to enhance and maintain Provide objective checks and balances among all relevant parties within the organization Use a cohesive project management approach that minimizes risk with respect to scope, budgets and schedules while maximizing a customers ability to remain flexible as technology and business evolves

Talk to the Infrastructure Experts

Collective has delivered over 5 million hours of consultative infrastructure services for customers across a range of industries. Learn more about how Collective can provide you with value-based, results-driven data center solutions to help you fully realize the promise of technology.

Main Number: 1-800-994-1640 Email: info@colltech.com Web: www.collectivetech.com

Collective Technologies 9433 Bee Caves Road Austin, TX 78733

Copyright 2006, Collective Technologies, LLC. All rights reserved. Collective Technologies, Collective Data Center LifeCycle Management, Delivering on the Promise of Technologies and the Collective Logo, are all registered trademarks or service marks of Collective Technologies LLC. All rights reserved.