Most Enterprises Waste About Half of Their Data Center Server Capacity

Cloudify your data center with InCommand

The numbers are staggering: most enterprises waste 40-50% of server capacity, according to a new study by 451 Research. Why are so many executives struggling to optimize IT spend? Let’s take a closer look at the findings from this 451 Research study and the steps service provider and enterprise leaders can take to gain data center efficiencies. 

On-Premise

Ninety-two percent of enterprises tell 451 Research that they have to wait a month or longer for new capacity to be installed – 41% have to wait three months or longer. The majority of enterprises simply cannot wait that long so they overbuild with a “better safe than sorry” mentality. It comes as no surprise that 70% of the survey respondents admitted that capacity planning was a headache. According to 451, 83% of enterprises still use fixed-capital models for on-premise capacity, making wastage more or less unpreventable. When it comes to on-prem deployments, respondents were most concerned with scalability and agility: 80% reported subpar provisioning times, 70% cited poor agility and 70% referred to the difficulties of capacity planning.

Public Cloud

The cloud isn’t always the answer to capacity planning. Sometimes it is not the most cost-effective solution, and 71% of enterprises claim that administering public cloud-reserved instances is a bigger challenge than expected. In addition, 68% of 451’s respondents said security was the biggest challenge in using public cloud, so on-premise remains an essential part of their IT strategy. Most enterprises cite security and compliance as the main drivers for on-premise.

A New Approach

The theme emerges quite quickly that as executives seek out digital transformation, they are having a very hard time finding the right balance of on-premise and cloud to maximize efficiency. This is frustrating, to say the least. Employing a unique approach combining real estate with data center and IT management, Serverfarm allows companies to have the security and compliance of on-prem and the scalability and flexibility of the cloud.

Run Your Data Center Like the Cloud

Serverfarm accelerates our customers’ digital transformations by deploying, running and managing all data center physical infrastructure through InCommand, our proprietary platform that is designed to transform data center infrastructure into a cloud-like experience.

We have found that data centers that are managed and run like cloud services free staff to perform value-added tasks and enable teams to focus on digital strategy. InCommand combines a highly-intelligent, flexible portal with clarified, proven processes and an expert team to help enterprises gain control over their IT and facilities infrastructure. With end-to-end visibility, enterprises are able to ensure optimal utilization of space, power and cooling, eliminating capacity inefficiencies by having greater visibility into resource allocation. Once InCommand is implemented, enterprises are able to spin up and draw down data center capacity in an elastic “cloud-like” fashion that seamlessly scales. InCommand’s combination of software, people and processes has helped our customers improve their agility, reliability and efficiencies by up to 40%. Serverfarm has proven capabilities to boost data center utilization from 30% to 85-90%.

Growth Flexibility through Sale-Leasebacks

Serverfarm combines this platform with its capital-efficient, unique sales-leaseback approach. Enterprises that have found that they simply no longer need all the space their data center offers have partnered with Serverfarm to lease assets back in a fashion that affords the enterprise significant growth flexibility.

If additional capacity is needed, it would take a matter of days versus months. From a bigger picture perspective, this scenario also hands over the day-to-day maintenance and operations of a data center, as well as the financial responsibility of infrastructure upgrades and modernization to a company that specializes in data center management – freeing up the enterprise’s financial and workforce resources to focus on its core business.

Meanwhile, by only occupying the footprint needed in a data center and sharing the space with other tenants, the enterprise realizes the cost-savings benefits of economy of scale in regards to power, cooling, security and more.

Executives should be focused on innovation within their core business, not the constant stress of data center optimization and management. Let Serverfarm show you how we can streamline your IT operations to lower costs – contact us.