Benefits of Data Center Consolidation

Data center consolidation leads to enormous advantages for businesses in addition to cost reductions. Technological innovation over the last several years has enabled businesses to do more with less, pushing efforts to reduce both environmental and infrastructure footprints.

For CIOs revisiting their data center strategy, we’ve outlined four key benefits of data center consolidation.

Consolidating data center facilities offers the ability to enhance operations, improve redundancy and flexibility, deliver higher availability and better use of IT assets. By streamlining your critical infrastructure, firms can do less with more, ultimately helping improve the end-user experience.

Firms can realize increased energy efficiencies through hardware refreshes during a consolidation program by right-sizing to more energy efficient platforms. Transitioning to newer infrastructure typically results in lower PUEs (Power Usage Effectiveness) and lower electric bills. This can deliver direct savings to an organization, allowing for reallocation and reinvestment of capital.

3. Enhanced Security, Mitigated Risk

Reducing your data center footprint enables centralization of data center infrastructure, which strengthens security and streamlines management. Reducing the size of your critical infrastructure helps reduce the attack landscape and scope of security for your organization. Consolidation also helps reduce risk by eradicating outdated, end-of-support platforms, mitigating opportunities for system failure.

Consolidation or divestiture of your data center assets also improves disaster recovery (DR), enabling businesses to implement a more robust DR plan that also encompasses options for replication in the cloud.

Through carefully planned consolidation and migration activities via data center experts, firms can introduce best-practices for ongoing operations. Leading firms use consolidation events as an opportunity to implement advanced management tools, systems and processes to provide real-time insight and transparency into their IT estate.

4. Cost Reductions

One of the biggest business drivers for data center consolidation is cost reduction. In fact, proper consolidation programs can lead to millions of dollars in cost reductions enterprise-wide.

How? Competition in growing data center markets has driven lease and power rates down. Consolidations help eliminate redundant and less efficient operations, as well as reduce maintenance expenses. Furthermore, advanced data center solutions can give organizations a true picture of the total cost of ownership for their critical facilities.

RESILIENCY. RELIABILITY. TRUST.

For over three decades, the world’s leading enterprises have relied on the unparalleled expertise, best-practice processes and innovation of Align. From small regional firms to leading financial firms to leading global SAS providers, we’ve helped businesses successfully design and build, manage, operate and consolidate data centers to optimize performance, reliability, productivity and efficiency.

Revisiting your data center strategy or have questions regarding your critical infrastructure options? Speak to a data center specialist today.