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© 2015 Uptime Institute, LLC

Avoid wasting time andmoney procuring DCIM

Matt Stansberry, Director of Content and Publications Uptime Institute

December 2015

2 © 2015 Uptime Institute, LLC

The Global Data Center Authority



Agenda • 2015 Data Center Industry Survey: Focus on DCIM• DCIM Deployment Problems• Defining Requirements • Evaluation Methodology


SCENARIO: Large Financial Company• Sent out a lengthy RFI: Developed a set of questions and asked vendors to provide answers.

• 14 qualified vendors: 40 people on each two hour conference call.

• 12 months later, still can’t get comparative or uniform pricing information. Vendors hiding the costs in the variability of the professional services fees.

• Narrowed field down to single vendor – but hearing negative information in the market.

• Running out of time – losing the budget by end of year.


Survey Demographics: 1,000 end users


DCIM Market Penetration


Do you expect a return on investment in DCIM within two years?


Why is ROI on DCIM so terrible? • Procurement and deployment take too long• Many organizations are not getting what they need from a single tool or vendor

• Pricing volatility, lack of value assigned to the market• Total costs of DCIM are hidden, undocumented, and under-represented

• Buyers use DCIM to replace existing facilities management functions.


How long did your organization spend evaluating DCIM systems before making a purchase?


How long did your organization spend deploying DCIM from purchase to full functionality?



DCIM Provider offers ten modules or functions


You want three


And you really want this one feature…


Approximately how much did your commercial DCIM software cost, including installation and setup services?



Which DCIM features are we using?



DCIM Deployment Nightmares Lessons Learned


Global colocation provider • Colo’s SALES execs made the purchase of DCIM tool for $US 1M.

• Facilities team doesn’t use the systems. Instead, rely on previously installed BMS and other subsystems. No operator value.

• “We’re paying for a dashboard. We should have spent the money on infrastructure to upgrade a site.”


Large transportation company • One year into implementation of large DCIM Vendor

• Should have been an easy transition due to legacy DCIM investments, but many functions still not working

• Owners had asked the vendor for reference customers or other users to troubleshoot integration issues with for over a year, with no response

• Planning to minimize reliance on the installed DCIM tool and start over.



Embracing the Best-of-Breed • Large U.S.-based financial firm started adopting multiple point products from various DCIM suppliers.

• Picked products that offered significant savings potential for individual projects.

• Focused on the business benefit, forced the vendors to sell you on the business benefit.

• Built a custom integration with an in-house app dev team.


DCIM EvaluationMethodology


Appropriate DCIM Buying Triggers


How to procure DCIM and achieve ROI• Define project goals and objectives: If data is not actionable it is irrelevant

• Document stakeholders, decision-making process, schedule, requirements, and workflow

• Document existing management and monitoring tools, and identify gaps between current assets and goals/requirements

• Assign a value (budget) and develop RFP

• Evaluate qualified responses with a holistic and consistent methodology





Uptime Institute FORCSS Index


Conclusions• DCIM Procurement is risky, takes a long time, and often provides no return on investment.

• Some organizations are seeing success -- those organizations are tying the purchase into a business decision.

• Many organizations are struggling to deal with poor DCIM implementations

• We are available to help!


Matt StansberryDirector of Content and Publications, Uptime Institute

[email protected]

Questions?