In March various members of the Cormant team presented Cormant DCIM (Data Center Infrastructure Management) at Data Center World San Antonio, TX, USA and Data Center World London, UK. Over two days at each event we met, literally, hundreds of people and had some great conversations. The DCIM (and beyond) interest at both shows was greater than we have previously seen, and in many cases those conversations were with people who already knew why they want DCIM. This is certainly a change from a few years ago and perhaps in part a reflection on the market maturity we are starting to see. I’d like to think the Cormant team did a great job explaining why Cormant-CS provides the best solution to customers. Cormant-CS provides a complete feature set in an easy to use web and mobile based system supported by full consulting, implementation services and training. Cormant boasts satisfied customers from 2003 who still maintain and regularly upgrade their Cormant-CS system. I think this is pretty remarkable, given how many “DCIM” solutions have come and gone in that time.
We do still get the question, “Why do I need DCIM when my team is managing our current data centers with spreadsheets?” This is best summed up by a large company I spoke to at one of the shows who admitted they recently did an audit of their racked equipment and equipment in storage and found 18% of the equipment they audited was not in use or had never been used. The equipment found was either not powered, had no live data connection, had crashed long ago, or was not being used as the applications had been migrated off the machine. In some cases the servers were still brand new, in-box, in a store room but were now a generation or two behind what they use. I did tell this company they were far from alone and in over 15 years we have yet to find more than two or three companies who stated their data was almost perfect and actually had no significant data issues when an audit was done. Cormant advises that the initial DCIM implementation goal is to get current data into the Cormant-CS solution and at the same time put processes in place to drive DCIM use and increase data accuracy over time. Adoption is often easy as people actually want a system they can get value from (rarely the case with spreadsheets). Providing useful data to management and other teams is typically what drives expanded use and further rollout.
Thanks to everyone who talked to us at the events, we really appreciated the conversations. We are looking forward to catching up with the many new contacts we made in the coming weeks.
Paul Goodison
April 2018
Click to see additional photos of the Cormant booth from the USA and UK shows!