Business Challenge
The director of IT at a major book, music, and home entertainment retailer recognized that the company's data center was approaching capacity. In addition to being nearly out of space for new equipment, the facility had "hot spots," making it difficult to maintain a consistent temperature. The facility also lacked a backup generator and a comprehensive universal power source. Furthermore, the director had concluded that the company's location--a remote city in a tornado zone--dictated the need for a more robust building to host its data center. However, she needed to be able to present senior management with a business case to justify the investment.
Solution
As a baseline for drafting a new plan and compiling the business case, Forsythe began by performing a detailed assessment of the current state of the data center facility's strengths and weaknesses, including interviews and photographs. Alongside this evaluation, Forsythe gathered information about the history of the business to understand precisely what the data center had been initially designed to support and how the demands upon it had grown over time. Likewise, information was obtained regarding actual IT utilization and IT asset inventory currently and over the life of the data center.
Results
Combining the information gathered through the assessment, the director's extensive research, and Forsythe's expertise in data center best practices, Forsythe helped the company determine a plan, budget and cost justification for upgrading the data center from a Tier I facility to a Tier II+ facility (on a scale of I-IV) as defined by the Uptime Institute, which publishes industry standards. One key element of Forsythe's recommendations was to locate the new data center in an unused section of the company's headquarters facility better suited for disaster avoidance (especially tornadoes). This enabled considerable cost savings in bringing the electricity, cooling, and telecommunications systems--the three pillars of the data center--up to requirements.
