If you ask different people on the facilities side of the mission critical environment what “infrastructure” means, you will get some very diverse answers, and yet again a very different set of responses from the IT side of the house. This also holds true for the current crop of DCIM offerings by the various vendors. In some cases, the products are based on adaptations of traditional building management systems (BMS), while in others, it is more focused on IT asset and network management. As to the question of why some have already deployed systems while others have yet to put pilot projects into their budgets, their motivations also vary.
So is DCIM just market-driven hype, or are there tangible benefits to be realized? Considering the costs of some of these products, as well as the cost to implement them, let’s try to exam the business benefit drivers and the pain points the DCIM product are attempting to deliver or solve.