Blog Posts From IT Peer Network Tagged With nehalem

New Server Refresh ROI Tool User Forum

webadmin@intel.com — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:03:15 GMT

Last year, I spent many hours sharing the key learnings from Intel IT's server refresh strategy and talking with others about how we had to re-justify our refresh investment internally last year due to capital spending cut-backs. We created a tool based on our IT finance learnings that was used by over 40,000 people last year. Many of our users had excellent suggestions on how we could improve the tool to meet a variety of user situations and needs.

We have just completed a several month project to update the estimator with many new features that were suggested by tool users including

ability to model multiple server environments simultaneously
ability to model consolidation virtualization based on VM (virtual machine) loading
ability to view inputs and outputs simultaneously
addition of many new cost and savings variables that we had not used at Intel but were relevant to other IT professionals

Watch this short video about the history of the tool to or visit our user forum where you can comment, ask questions and share insights

Access the tool here

Chris

Data Center Execution and Unit Costing

webadmin@intel.com — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:10:55 GMT

I was recently involved in a project where Intel IT SMEs from disciplines including Server, Storage, Data Center, Network, and Finance reviewed and updated our Data Center Strategy (Intel IT Data Center Solutions: Strategies to Improve Efficiency) for Intel IT. The primary focus of the paper was to provide an update on value realized, shifts in strategy, and key execution lessons learned.

Our execution highlighted the need for finance to participate as an active partner in the influence planning and internal communications. At some point, especially in economically challenging environments, cross organization investment decisions boil down to a tradeoff between limited resources and a number of good projects. Being able to clearly articulate the value added by a "portfolio of projects" (like the Data Center Strategy) and how you will track progress doesn’t mean that the project(s) will be funded – but it does increase the likelihood that you will be in the game at the end. For us, having this coordinated communication strategy for technology solutions,cost efficiency, and operational efficiency was a key consideration for successful execution.

We currently estimate that the cumulative projected financial impact over eight years will be ~$500-650M NPV - this range has changed in upper and lower limits based on updates to forecasts. Over the first three years, Intel IT has realized ~31% of the projected benefits through execution to the Data Center strategy. The primary value driver has been the impact of our server strategies (multi-core refresh and virtualization) that enable demand growth within the existing data center footprint and affordability targets. Moving into 2010, we are evaluating new forecasting and value metrics to enhance customer reporting of data center activities. This approach will incorporate our activity driver methodology into comprehensive unit costing and forecasting framework, creating a holistic cost forecasting process to improve future decision making.

One area currently under review is establishing the right unit of measure for a data center infrastructure housing different compute environments. Is this something you or your business partners are exploring or looking to explore?

Silos and Server Huggers. Are They Holding Your IT Organization Back?

webadmin@intel.com — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:46:46 GMT

As I started my transition into a new job within Intel IT a few months ago, I discovered that one our internal IT strategic imperatives was “Partnership”. I have to admit that at first I dismissed this a simply one of many standard business leadership terms that any organization could choose to operate on (I hope Diane Bryant, Intel CIO, is not reading this ). However, I’m learning how critical partnerships are for a high functioning and value driven IT organization, both within the IT organization and between IT and the business groups they support.

With much of the focus these days on the lack of capital budgets limiting IT investment and innovation, I’m learning that a larger underlying barrier for IT organizations to enhance and maximize value inside their businesses, centers around the themes of trust, alignment and ultimately, partnership. Organizational Silos inside any business create natural barriers to innovation. Some silos exist naturally and others are self imposed.

Let’s look inside a typical IT organization where you are likely to find three functional areas: Architecture, Engineering, Operations. These functions exist naturally inside most IT organizations. Recently, I had an opportunity to talk about the inner workings of these functions inside an IT organization with Gregg Wyant, Intel IT CTO and Chief Architect. These groups are designed to fulfill very unique roles in the IT organization and designed to create an expertise in these functional areas to maximize effectiveness within their chartered goals (chart below). However, if partnership (or at least an understanding of these different roles and goals) doesn’t exist across these groups the credibility of the IT organization can be at risk and the value IT delivers to the business undermined.

Imagine if the architecture group creates a vision that can not be implemented by engineering or was is cost prohibitive in the manpower or solutions needed to implement it operationally. IT’s costs would rise dramatically and/or the architecture design efforts would simply be wasted. Or imagine if IT never challenged the status quo operational processes and just continued to operate “the way it has always been done”. If this happens, we would never improve business processes. Obviously there is a balance required here and partnership across these disciplines can help an organization operate at a higher level of delivered business value and IT efficiency. After completing a recent job coverage rotation himself, Gregg articulated to me the importance of IT to IT partnership across these disciplines and cross functional job rotations within IT. The benefits help an IT organization maximize operational cost savings and service levels, react quickly to changing business and technical conditions while balancing and prioritizing investments for the good of the overall business - versus optimizing any one individual discipline or organization.

If we look outside the walls of the IT organization, we can also see how silos can negatively affect the business – this brings me to the subject of Server Huggers.

A Server Hugger is someone who currently has or is demanding to IT that they have a physical server (or many servers) dedicated to their business function or department --> they want to touch it, know it is theirs and know that they don’t have to share it with anyone else (either in IT or another business unit). Server Huggers can be individuals or business groups. And in a world where most servers still run an average of 5-10% utilization, it is easy to see how these silo-oriented “server huggers” can create inefficiency in the business. To deploy virtualization (or accelerate the rate of virtualization adoption) inside any business, the business teams and IT often need to breakdown this silo’d approach and find ways to delivered required or higher service levels while running on shared, virtualized hardware resources.

This was at the heart of a discussion I recently had around Intel IT’s strategy to accelerate virtualization inside our Office and Enterprise computing environments. The first step in executing this strategy is to identify the target servers, document who owns them (if IT doesn’t – in many cases we don’t), size the new environment and convince the business owners that virtualizing is OK. With demonstrated proof of concept virtualization ratios at up to 20:1 using the latest Intel Xeon 5500 based servers, our opportunity for savings is dramatic if we can rid our organization of server hugger behavior. With tops down support from IT management and an environment of partnership already established with our business customers, I believe we have a clear path to success.

Partnerships inside Intel IT can be seen in how we create and measure business value with our business partners, how our own IT organization encourages IT rotation and how we strategically align our IT planning efforts with our business plans.

It is clear to me that our Intel IT Strategic Imperative of Partnership is much more than management lip-service … it is at the heart of our IT operational philosophy … and for good reason.

Good bye Silos! Good bye Server Huggers! … we have no use for you any more.

Chris Peters, Intel IT

Engage Intel experts in IT to IT discussions inside the IT@Intel community

Follow me on Twitter

Installing Cash Machines in your Data Center

webadmin@intel.com — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 08:10:04 GMT

At a recent event our CIO, Diane Bryant, talked about our continued plan to replace old servers in our Data Centers (http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/44213/135/). Here is a summary of her key points:

Not replaceing servers could have costed Intel $19 million due to high maintenance and cooling cost
Our plan of refreshing old servers with Nehalem servers will save Intel $250 million over 8 years

If you are an IT manager looking at where you can find extra dollar in your IT budget to invest in new technology, new innovation and new competitive capability for your organization, this must be good news for you! Moreover, if you do nothing, you are opening a hole in your IT budget.

Here is a recent white paper and a video we published to discuss our server refresh strategy and how we are getting the cost benefit Diane Bryant shared:

Realizing Data Center Savings with an Accelerated Server Refresh Strategy

We have also developed a Server Refresh ROI estimator so you can calculater the amount of savings you can get from these cash machines:

http://www.intel.com/go/xeonestimator

If you ain't satisfied, here is a video showing you how to use the estimator!

Go and install those cash machines into your data centers now! 8-)