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Heatwave highlights poor IT management

The current heat wave is not the only problem CIOs need to deal with, but it's indicative of a much larger problem

By Maggie Holland, 1 Aug 2006 at 17:22

Organisations must ensure greater collaboration between their IT and facilities management departments to avoid some of the issues that have been exacerbated by the recent heat wave.

That is the warning from business continuity and disaster recovery specialist SunGard Availability Services in light of the recent high temperatures.

Power prices are also on the up and will help propel this issue higher up CIOs' agendas, according to the company. It has seen these cost increases first hand, with power supply charges to one of its data centres rising by 40 per cent in April and another centre's set to rocket by 50 per cent this month.

Sunguard claims that businesses need to start taking a lead from financial services and broadcasting organisations who are used to advanced planning for the amount of computing power and space they will need at any given time.

According to SunGard, businesses have felt the ill-effect of consolidation efforts where the old and new equipment continue to run in parallel for a period, consuming additional resources and space.

"Five years ago, the problem of needing more power and generators would have crept up on you. Whereas this has come fast, hit hard and is not an easy fix," said Dave Gilpin, SunGard's chief information officer.

"Departments must work more closely together. There needs to be a lot more joined up writing. The retail industry has good controls but is also fairly dynamic on its feet when making changes. Whereas banks, for example, have multiple sign-offs and are used to making changes and [assessing] risk."

Gilpin says that many businesses are aware that increased power consumption has a knock-on effect on cost, space and availability but that they need to make sure they view these issues in context and share project information with other parties.

"Blade servers use a lot of energy but if you're not deploying them or you're only deploying a few it doesn't matter," he explained.

"If you don't forecast project needs, you can't talk to people about options early enough and are riding on luck. But big generators have long lead times and a brand new machine room can take up to three years to create."