From...

November 11, 1999
Web posted at: 8:26 a.m. EST (1326 GMT)

by Chuck Musciano

(IDG) -- In my formative years, when the hot new microprocessor was the 8085, debate teams were still common in high schools. Mostly the province of geeks and nerds, debate teaches a skill that proves useful later in life: the ability to assess and argue either side of an issue.

Most debates follow the same general guidelines. Prior to the actual debate, each team is presented with an assertion of some kind, usually topical and controversial. Team members spend days or even weeks preparing their arguments, without being told which side they will be defending in competition. Only when the debate is about to begin are they given their position, either for or against the resolution. Then, with eloquence and fervor, they must attempt to trounce the opposition and convince a panel of judges that theirs is the opinion that should prevail.

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Who knew good debating skills would serve today's system managers and operations directors so well? During these changing times, as technology issues and buzzwords come and go with increasing rapidity, a dance that goes back and forth to either side of a sysadmin conflict can be prettier than any endzone celebration you're likely to see on Sunday afternoon. And for many, the latest for-and-against conflict surrounds server consolidation.

In theory, server consolidation is a simple idea: by bringing together data services in an environment where all users can partake on an as-needed basis, labor is conserved and money saved. Why spread your systems and support costs across the entire company when you can reduce them and increase effectiveness by consolidating? I'll tell you why: because, consolidation shifts the balance of power between those who own computers and those who use them. Far from a simple technical decision, consolidation ignites a firestorm of political and personal conflict, stepping on personal agendas, business plans, and company policy.

Throughout all of this, the systems support people are like the medics caught in the cross fire. They weren't the ones who decided to consolidate, and as such they're offered no say in how or when the consolidation will occur. They are, however, expected to make the consolidation work, to apply the gauze and bandages, to stop the bleeding, and endure the endless complaints from those on both sides.

Having been through a few of these major conflicts, I'm going to make things easier for you: I'll examine, support, and refute the top five reasons for and against server consolidation. Download this handy summary into your Palm Pilot, and you'll be ready, at a moment's notice, to defend your career and live to fight another day.

Together everyone achieves more!
Here are the top five reasons it makes sense to consolidate servers, combine computing resources, and create a more streamlined, effective data services organization:

Hardware is getting cheaper and more powerful every day
Increasingly cheaper and faster computing hardware makes effective server consolidation easier than ever. Even a few years ago, the fastest servers were required to run standalone, enterprise-class applications. With single applications like PeopleSoft, SAP, and Baan consuming entire servers and vast disk arrays, adding a mixture of smaller applications simply wasn't possible.

Things have changed. Rapid increases in processor speed, backplane bandwidth, and disk capacity have made it possible to place multiple applications on a single machine, with little overlap or conflict. In fact, many large applications have enough idle time and spare capacity to allow several smaller applications to share the box with no impact on end users. Economies of scale dictate that the overall cost per computing cycle is reduced, which benefits the entire business.

Administrative support is expensive and hard to find
Computing systems and their applications are now more complicated than ever before. Finding talented support staff is difficult; retaining them is harder still. Instead of trying to create a miniature support staff for each area, we should create a world-class support group that can provide expert service to all of our business units. This centralized group can attract and retain key individuals to be enterprise subject-matter experts on a vast array of technology issues. For everything from database design to systems administration to online security, this core group will provide timely advice and consulting services to anyone in the company.

The cost of the group will be spread over the entire company, thus achieving economies of scale that help the bottom line. In fact, some areas of expertise that were previously unavailable to smaller business units because of cost factors will now be within reach of anyone who needs them. Moreover, as these experts visit and learn more about every unit of the company, their overall view will help exploit common tools and techniques that previously went unrecognized. In fact, with more efficient operations and improved business practices, this group will likely pay for itself.

Standard services help streamline our internal support costs
Many business units have common computing needs but don't collaborate to create common solutions. Instead, we reinvent the wheel many times over by building parallel support organizations for each unit. Even worse, quality of service varies among groups, which makes support and management inconsistent and therefore more expensive.

Consolidation lets you build best-of-breed support organizations at the enterprise level, bringing top-notch service to each business unit in a consistent manner. You can seek out the very best folks in your company and bring them together to build the best data center possible. Because services are designed and provided consistently, you can manage costs better, deliver more consistent results, and leverage those efforts across the whole company.

Vendor management is easier and more effective
Rapid technology changes make vendor relationships a full-time job. The only way to stay ahead is to settle on a few strategic partnerships for all of your major needs. Keeping these relationships alive at your company's lower levels is hard -- the vendor sales force gets spread thin, corporate goals aren't communicated well, and you often miss opportunities for volume purchasing. Even worse, each business unit develops its own technology road map and standard, which leads to incompatible systems throughout the company.

Keeping vendors focused at the top level helps them understand your entire business picture, not just each business unit. As you change priorities and shift gears, they shift with you, providing the best service for all of your users. As you leverage consolidated systems and support, you can leverage consolidated vendor relationships as well.

Accurate cost models makes for better business
Computing infrastructures require money, and lots of it. Back in the mainframe days, costs were easy to assess because they could be isolated to a single, central cost center. But with the introduction of personal computers, local servers, and distributed computing networks, it's almost impossible to determine the true cost of computing in any company. With increasing competition and decreasing margins, your company needs to run every business aspect as efficiently as possible, which includes accurate accounting.

By centralizing its computing capabilities, your company can more easily isolate and account for the cost of every aspect of data services. From maintenance contracts to administrative support, one can determine costs and figure out how to recover them from the user community. True cost recovery forces each element of the business to carry its fair share of the computing overhead. When business units are forced to pay their own way, they'll use data services more wisely and effectively.

There you have it: five succinct reasons for immediately consolidating computing services in your company. With these kinds of advantages and the resulting potential for corporate-wide synergy, how could you not want to consolidate as quickly as possible?

Live free or die!
Here are the top five reasons why it makes sense for your company to create and maintain separate computing environments, each tailored to the specific needs and capabilities of the many unique business units in your corporation:

Hardware is getting cheaper and more powerful every day
In the mainframe computing era, prohibitive costs made the idea of individual computing systems a pipe dream. Even the development of minicomputers in the 1970s didn't help, although large organizations began to distribute computers closer to end users, thus improving response time, customer service, and end-user satisfaction.

Now that Moore's law is really kicking in, we're getting unbelievable performance at incredibly low prices. For the first time we can cheaply obtain machines that outperform even the fastest machines of just two years ago. This lets workgroups and individuals exploit some computing resources without interfering with others. Here's an important point: no matter how powerful a shared system is, it's still shared. Even the most well-meaning user can create jobs that saturate the machine and affect other users. With distributed machines, this kind of overlap and interference is impossible, and everyone's jobs run faster and better.

Administrative support is expensive and hard to find
Many distributed systems are targeted to a specific task; often they take the form of a turnkey system that meets the needs of just a few users. Expertise for these systems is localized and deep, with users well-versed in how to administer and use the systems. It may be expensive to support these systems, but the cost is fixed, regardless of where the systems are located or how they're combined.

It would be cost-prohibitive to amass similar expertise at the consolidated level. Why should others shoulder the cost of supporting specific applications that have no bearing on other business units? A classic example is combining engineering systems support with that of financial and HR systems; there's no synergy between the two, so no costs are saved. Even worse, available support is made distant from the user communities, less involved in their business, and less engaged in active support of the application.

Standard services help streamline our internal support costs
Standard services are great if standard services are all you need, which isn't likely. The reality is that each business unit is unique, as are the services needed to support it. You may do well to consolidate some common support areas (help desks are good candidates), while leaving others to local experts. For example, if you have a great CAD support team with an established CAD vendor relationship, you could never consolidate a support group that had the same expertise and vendor history. Moreover, you won't get those experts to move to the consolidated service group by dangling location, money, or career goals at them. Instead, you'll get a second-rate service group trying to provide similar services at a distance.

Customer focus requires being close to the customer. While a centralized support group may be cheaper, the service it delivers isn't as good. Fixing mistakes is more costly than preventing them, so you're better off consolidating common support areas and leaving application-specific areas, especially high-end engineering and support applications, alone. It is just as bad to ask the PeopleSoft experts to support your inventory management system as it is to ask your CAD experts to keep track of that financial package.

Vendor management is easier and more effective
Consolidating vendors works out well if one or two can meet all of your needs. This, however, is rarely the case. Just as close support groups provide better service, close vendors provide better deals and find products attuned to your immediate needs.

Seldom does it make sense to adjust local buying patterns to accommodate lofty corporate goals. If a group needs two copies of a tool to meet a deadline, who is served by delaying the purchase six weeks while requests are aggregated from the rest of the company? Even worse, consolidated buying often forces lesser units to use different products to achieve volume buying levels. As a result, users wind up with unfamiliar tools that don't work as well as the tools they're used to using. The bottom line may look better, but lost productivity and wasted time can never be fully accounted for.

Accurate cost models let us run our business better
Separate business units are maintained precisely because they're separate business units, which means they have different goals, strategies, and plans. While we all work together to create a common corporation, differences at the unit level can be drastic. With this in mind, there is no single cost model that can accurately represent computing activities for every unit in the company.

Most importantly, different business units are willing to invest in their computing resources in different ways. For some, it may be appropriate to sink a significant percentage of revenue into computing services, especially if they're heavily into the R&D phase of a new product life cycle. For established units, little more than maintenance efforts are required. Unfortunately, a single cost model applied across all business units will wind up undercharging one unit while overcharging another, especially on such soft costs as administrative time or help desk overhead.

The reality of cost models is that they are abstract models of cost data collected over time and massaged to fit a balance sheet. Using them may make you feel like things are better managed, but costs will rarely be apportioned out fairly according to actual usage.

Given all this, who would ever consider consolidation? Hidden costs, loss of productivity, reduced vendor relationships: it just isn't worth it. Stick with distributed services that are tuned to meet the needs of the local personnel.

Get your index cards ready
There, I've done all I can; the rest is up to you. Commit these arguments to memory, assess your target audience, and get ready for the forensics performance of a lifetime. About the only thing I can't give you here is the big shovel and hip boots you'll need to pull this off. Have you tried eBay?