The massively complex and heterogeneous environment within the data center undergoes tremendous change on a continual basis. To meet the needs of the ever-changing data center and ensure the infrastructure and applications function properly on an on-going basis, a new business paradigm - Data Center Service Management™ (DCSM)™ - has been introduced. DCSM is an extension of the IT Service Management (ITSM) discipline to help organizations evolve to a higher level of process maturity within the data center.

Many organizations focus on improving the overall IT process maturity, but tend to neglect implementing these processes within the physical domain of the data center. Through the ITSM discipline, many organizations have successfully elevated the people, process and technological maturity to more proactive levels; however these disciplines do not specifically address the data center - putting the organization at risk with exorbitant operating costs, significant downtime and the inability to meet both current and future demands.

By broadening the ITSM discipline to the data center, DCSM helps organizations employ an integrated set of systems and processes to holistically manage the data center as a single entity, including the overall physical infrastructure. Only by managing the data center from this holistic perspective - by taking every aspect and responsibility within the data center into account - can organizations truly reach a higher level of data center process maturity and deliver IT services in complete alignment with business objectives.

Key benefits of implementing DCSM within the data center include:

• Successfully progress from the use of ad hoc tools and limited processes into an integrated entity
• Ability to manage the data center through a “single pane of glass” to eliminate the potential of errors
• Access to real-time, actionable information for valuable decision support and key performance indicators across multiple data centers
• Multi-dimensional perspective to support the needs of both IT and Facilities
• Ability to sense and proactively respond to events in real-time through monitoring and automation

To appropriately apply the principles of DCSM, a comprehensive enterprise solution must be able to provide significant levels of control over the infrastructure, manage processes, conduct robust measurements and reporting, proactively plan for changes and deliver real-time monitoring in the data center. Aperture VISTA is the only proven enterprise solution with the ability to apply the principles of DCSM within the data center. With its use, organizations can achieve significantly lower operational costs, align resource usage to available capacity, forecast data center requirements from business projections and reduce the potential errors from the “human element”.

Find out more information on Aperture VISTA.