Cornering Consolidation

Everyone wants to save money. And for IT departments, storage networking seems just the ticket. A range of products, from SANs to wide-area file services software, is offered to centralize data access, eliminating extra servers and arrays -- and the technicians required to oversee them.

Industry literature teems with consolidation success stories. Our Byte and Switch User Profiles section is full of examples. There's the clustered NAS that replaced a mishmash of DAS and saved millions during the Super Bowl (see Sports Illustrated); the IP SANs that streamlined archiving for TV ratings (see Nielsen Media Research); the Fibre Channel fabric that stitched out racks of old-fashioned storage kit from a big manufacturer's data center (see Panasonic).

All these case studies involved the purchase of new equipment, and in many instances, the outlay was sizeable. A new SAN can cost hundreds of thousands in hardware alone. The reward, of course, is a quantifiable savings that delivers ROI in short order.

What's not always highlighted is the risk involved in implementing this stuff. Consolidating equipment with storage networking gear disrupts workflow, messes with SLAs, and can wreak havoc on departmental politics. It may require a new way of working. It may call for IT departments to work with new vendors, ones still living on VC money.

Lurking in the dark corners of this industry are stories that don't make the headlines -- the consolidation failures. But they do happen, sometimes on a grand scale, and sometimes in a quiet, miserable way.Indeed, one of the saddest outcomes of a consolidation project gone awry may be a failure to make the most of an opportunity. If savings resulting from a SAN installation are just marginal, an IT manager may still have a job. But without credibility, future doors will close.

What's to blame? Short-sightedness. "Yes, a lot of projects fail, and it's due to meeting the needs of the urgent versus the important," says one industry analyst, who asked not to be named. "It's hard to remember your task was to drain the swamp when you're up to your elbows in alligators." [Ed. note: "elbows"?]

Another source says a specific plan can help. All projects require a step-by-step methodology, says Shally Stanley, CTO of consultancy Greenwich Technology Partners. In our latest free onsite report, Consolidation: A Stepped Approach, she lists the seven steps that give a project every chance of showing off, not showing up, IT's skills.

The steps look deceptively simple: data gathering, impact assessment, design, benchmarking, and so forth. But closer scrutiny shows they are really shorthand for what can become a very complex and even tedious process.

Still, Stanley says the steps have worked for a range of clients, beginning with Guardian Life Insurance. Guardian sought GTP's help reducing about 500 Windows NT-based servers and more than 300 Unix servers by half, with corresponding operational savings."GTP initially performed a security and network assessment to determine the gaps and vulnerabilities that would need to be addressed during the consolidation effort," Stanley says. With this information, plus in-depth study of Guardian's operations, the consultants devised the steps she outlines in the report.

By the way, Byte and Switch is hosting a Webinar on another aspect of storage consolidation, namely, ensuring that once the plan to consolidate is in place, it can be carried out successfully. To join us on Thursday, February 24, for "Storage Consolidation: Tools, Tips, Best Practices," click here.

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch