IT consolidation - Saving money on crisis times

Por solicitud de un amigo, ahora me lancé a escribir un post en otro idioma, espero perdonen la redacción, jeje.. ahi les va..

IT areas face new challenges to reduce operation costs. Virtualization and IT consolidation is one of multiple options which are available in the market, some reasons to consolidate and virtualize IT infrastructure are wideranging. While most IT managers focus on just the cost of the physical IT infrastructure, there are many additional benefits that can be derived from IT consolidation which will affect the P&L directly, IE: Simplified management, improved data protection, improved resource utilization, easier revision control, easier data protection and security, flexibility and reduced server and software costs.

I will share with you some useful steps to save money in this crisis times.

First Step: Capacity planning process, you always find that you clould use your IT infrastructure in a better way.

• Determine service level requirement- Define workloads, determine the unit of work, Identify service levels for each workload.
• Analyze current system capacity - Measure service levels and compare to objectives, measure overall resource usage, measure resource usage by workload and identify components of response time.
• Plan for the future - Determine future processing requirements, plan future system configuration

Second Step: Lay out a change strategy

• Understand where you are and where you want to be on your IT infrastructure journey.
  Link IT infrastructure consolidation with the key business needs for change or business strategy objectives.
• Find and Put someone in charge, and empower the person with the authority and accountability for results - Not the IT manager.
• Engage financial and personnel management resources with the IT team to help measure current costs, and design an appropriate chargeback approach.
• Create a financial incentive for willing participation - People perspective.

Third Step: Develop a plan for resiliency

• Consider the redundancy of applications, storage and servers.
• Implement backup systems that enable immediate failover for mission critical systems.

Fourth Step: Test performance & consolidation

• Before consolidation process test all your movements.

Fifth Step: Plan a phased roll-out deployment

• Define the support model in the initial phases of the consolidation process.
• Define the applications make the most sense to be consolidated first
• Complete the consolidation process with change management, information and communcation in functional areas.
• Define performance indicators - service & cost.

And don't forget, use metrics always in all steps. if you dont measure, you wont be able to do it