Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Data Farm
Inc.®
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The Technical "Know-How"
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Building vs Migration - Which is Cost Effective?
The key issues needed to addressed are the following:
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The actual cost of the running data center
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The actual cost of building a new site with the latest and greatest
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The actual cost of migrating into new site or new technologies
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Executives and decision-makers and the vicious circle
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Middle management roles and their supportive foot-soldiers managers
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Our approach to the Best Practice
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The actual cost of the running data center:
Before we get caught into details which would not address the actual issues, we will split the cost into following:
• Known running cost
• Unknown running cost
Known running cost can be calculated and/or searched. As for the unknown running cost which would include
old and decaying hardware and software, unqualified staff, poorly managed infrastructure, no documentation
and data redundancies and the list is not small. To bring the picture to view, let us look at a company like
Microsoft which has one million running server. Let us assume that these servers are not running at their
optimum and calculate what we call the hidden cost.
Total number of servers:
1,000,000
According to the internet, most companies have between 50,000 to 100,000
servers. Therefore for a company with 100K servers, the hidden cost or loss
would be 10% of what Microsoft would have. So the hidden cost in five years
will still be in the $Billions.
The actual cost of building a new site with the latest and greatest:
The actual cost of building a new data center with latest and the greatest
will a run into the $Billion and will take a long time to build.
The actual cost of migrating into new site or new technologies:
Migration is the middle management's nightmare and the big puzzle which no one
has the optimum answer. Sadly regardless what these managers claim, they are dealing
with a mess which has been building up for years and no manager is willing to
face the top executives with the reality of the actual status their existing data
centers. We also want to add that these top executives are not will to take the
cost of building a new data centers, since they may end up in the same messed up
data centers they started with.
Executives and decision-makers and the vicious circle:
Spending over a $billion with no guarantee of having the latest and greatest might mean the
end of this executive career. So we have a vicious circle, which starts with top executives
do not have solid guarantees nor there is a justification for it. Another point is that
middle management do not want to be the escape goat for any risk. Therefore, top executives
and decision-makers do not want to take a risk and middle management do not want to be the
escape goat and the vicious circle continues.
Middle management roles and their supportive foot-soldiers management:
Executives and decision-makers make decisions and middle management turn them into reality
with the support of foot-soldiers management. The building or migration of data centers
rest primary on the shoulder of middle management. These middle managers are the key to
making things happen. They should take the responsibility of both facing executives and
decision-makers with guarantees and assurance and also work with foot-soldiers managers
to turn decisions into reality.
Our approach to the Best Practice:
Deciding between which route to take Build or Migration requires middle management to do
what is best for their companies and address the following:
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How bad the existing data center infrastructure is?
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Estimate the hidden cost
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Research the technologies and see how far off their data centers actually are
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Create a plan for both Build and Migration
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Create risk analysis and remedy
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Calculate the Return on the Investment
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Brainstorm the plan with foot-soldiers managers
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Estimate the actual cast of Build or Migration
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Present their plan and analysis to executives and decision-makers
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We believe that our Object Oriented approach would be the best practice for either Build or Migration.
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