Cost reduction, crisis management deals and other appeals appear increasingly in the press.

But let’s try to analyze possible ways to reduce costs for data centers and realize what is effective, and what is useful, what does not have a clear economic benefit.

Regarding cost reductions in IT you must understand that most of the discussions in the press one way or another are sponsored by manufacturers of IT systems, and their aim is, as it is known, not to reduce income, but growth.

But to ensure the sales growth it is required to meet the expectations of customers, and if the client wants to reduce IT costs, then the supplier will try to meet these expectations and thus increase its own profit.

Unfortunately, in most cases it is much easier to create an impression than to be.

For a start it would be great to understand what part the costs of storage make?

What percentage do the storage systems make in the aggregate amount of IT spending?

According to the analytical agency TOOLS4CIO.RU, the percentage of the cost for data center is 8% of all IT costs.

Historically, the main opportunity for cost reductions in storage systems was the consolidation of distributed data centers.

Consolidation increases the utilization and enables organizations to save on the scale.

But it also helps the suppliers of storage systems to argue the need of purchasing new systems.

But maybe there are more ways to reduce costs for data centers?

To answer this question, we conducted a survey among IT Directors, and IT Directors noted the following potential savings in data centers:

* Consolidation of data centers. Consolidation of distributed data centers can significantly reduce the amount of purchased and leased equipment and improve service quality;

* Jump to open platforms (Linux) – can significantly reduce the cost of hardware;

* Transfer to a storage area network – through the transition from disk arrays to SAN solution can improve utilization and reduce total cost of storage;

* Server virtualization. Server virtualization can improve utilization and reduce the total number of supported servers;

* Shared Processing Centers – Company unfolding clusters with load balancing can reduce the need for new hardware in different locations;

* Use of used equipment – companies can buy used equipment to reduce the initial capital costs;

* Purchases with option for the upgrade and downgrade – to reduce the risks of overinvestment, you can negotiate with suppliers on the return and replacement of equipment in case of changing needs;

* Centralization of purchases – companies can better control costs, identify unnecessary charges of suppliers and provide economies of scale, negotiating the best prices and terms;

* Outsourcing – to reduce fixed costs, some companies are moving from an internal deployment and management to outsourcing and paying for actual consumption;

* Detailed storage costs by unit, by task – companies can reduce the need for storage capacity by sending detailed reports on individual use and cost breakdown by task / unit;

* Creation of policy – through the creation of IT policies that limit the mailbox size, automation of data archiving from a computer, you can pro-actively reduce the need for data storage systems;

Due to the fact that the survey was conducted at the beginning of the crisis, many IT Directors noted that they faced with the problem that they need to give reason for new investment in IT in order to save.

Ie Let’s spend a few tens of thousands of dollars, and we will have an opportunity to save in the future.

It is quite logical and correct, but you need to spend money now, when there is little money and it is difficult to get loans, and your savings will be tomorrow, and in order to understand saving took place, you will need to do complex calculations.

In the course of the survey it was also found out that the most effective way to save is very simple, namely, to buy nothing.

But, unfortunately, nothing is simple, data volumes grow, and at the same time they don’t grow linearly, and there may soon be a situation when it is physically nowhere to store data.

When trying to convince business users to reduce the amount of data, the service usually gets a response – we need all this data to run business.

But if we split the costs of data centers by division, according to business needs, according to the data itself and give business units the report that they store and how much it will cost to this company, the conversation becomes more productive.

One of the surveyed IT directors said that when they began to understand in more detail what data the users store and how much it costs to business, it was found out that the company stores and synchronizes data centrally from “My Documents” folders, but not only business documents, but also photos and videos are stored.

In this particular case, the maximum effect was achieved by simply changing the IT policies and organization of work.

Lack of storage capacity was compensated by the purchase of used equipment.

Thus we have: the most effective ways are the simplest.

When the most simple ways have already been used, then it makes sense to move to more costly and complex ways.