A Data Center Migration: Does it Make Sense for my Organization?

Transcription

1 A Data Center Migration: Does it Make Sense for my Organization? Special Report: How to Capture Value Without Service Interruptions Issue 1 Welcome When Is It Time to Migrate? The Top Five Business Benefits of a Data Center Migration A Data Center Relocation Client Interview: Was It Worth It? The Migration Strategy Board Legacy Defense Contractor Saves Millions by Consolidating Data Centers From the Gartner Files: Data Center Migrations Five Steps to Success About David-Kenneth Group Featuring research from

2 2 Welcome Your data center(s) is at the heart of business operations. Greater demand is being placed on it to do more with less. Remaining agile and resilient is a chronic concern. What are others like you doing to address these challenges? What do the experts say about it? In this newsletter we aim to tackle these questions. We ll explore how you can not only keep pace with these evolving requirements, but do so without interruption to services. Many organizations are choosing a data center migration project, as the strategic solution for their data center. The benefits speak for themselves lower operating costs, improved service levels, greater agility all of which creates a leaner and more flexible data center that benefits your bottom line. In this issue look for research from the experts at Gartner, from peer companies who chose a data center migration project, and insight from our experts at David-Kenneth Group. Data center transformations are what we do all day, every day. It s our singular focus. And, data center migrations are our core service offering. I hope you find this issue helpful in your pursuit. Yours truly, Dave Mathisen, CEO David-Kenneth Group

3 3 When Is It Time to Migrate? While every organization has unique business dynamics and needs, there are 5 primary reasons why organizations decide to migrate. 1. Business Acquisition, Merger, or Divesture You are about to finalize your latest merger or acquisition. The challenges are to remove redundancies, consolidate capacity, and achieve cost savings. To aggravate the situation, your current data center is at capacity, making future business developments vulnerable. 2. Stunted Growth You have experienced steady business growth. The existing data center has organically grown and supported your requirements, until recently. Virtualization helped. But, you are quickly approaching capacity again, and the capital budget does not support an immediate build-out. 3. Cost Reduction Current infrastructure is suffering from server sprawl. Associated costs are increasing with redundant licenses, maintenance fees, and power consumption. Multiple sites, even server closets, that evolved over time also created inefficiencies that are increasing costs. 4. Changing Business Needs Security, legal, and compliance requirements have intensified. An evolving and aging environment have produced complexities and inefficiencies. It is a clunky ecosystem that is neither agile nor responsive to new business requirements. 5. Inadequate Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Circumstances require a need to re-examine your continuity and disaster recovery plans. Multiple plans for multiple sites are unmanageable; recovery point (RPO) and recovery time (RTO) objectives are not acceptable based on improved SLA s. If you are facing any of these challenges, we encourage you to evaluate the benefits of a data center migration. Experience demonstrates that successful data center migration projects can completely transform an organization s overall operating environment its processes, procedures, documentation and personnel. It has significant, lasting benefits for day-to-day operational efficiencies. David-Kenneth Group understands this and manages every day center migration project with this larger vision in mind. Source: David-Kenneth Group The Top Five Business Benefits of a Data Center Migration 1. Lowers costs to operate A migration reduces costs by simplifying your environment. It increases environmental efficiencies while decreasing power, floor space, licensing, and maintenance costs. Costs savings can range between 30% and 70%. 2. Increases reliability A migration improves productivity, reduces risk and downtime providing consistent and increased performance for service level agreements and objectives (SLAs/SLOs). 3. Improves responsiveness to changing business needs A migration produces a leaner environment. It improves availability, performance, and flexibility of data center services, enabling a scalable infrastructure and application platform that can meet evolving end-user demands. 4. Strengthens security A migration sharpens the focus and effectiveness of information security with a simpler, standardized environment. 5. Enhances service levels In many cases, elements of your data center environment cannot be adapted, limiting your ability to improve service tiers. A migration produces a higher level of consistent service at a reduced cost. It provides interoperable and portable IT services and solutions that enable geographic diversity across your enterprise. IT organizations become a business partner not a cost center. Source: David-Kenneth Group

4 4 A Data Center Relocation Client Interview: Was It Worth It? Company AgFirst Industry Largest agricultural lending institution in the U.S. Thanks to the guidance of the [David-Kenneth Group], we did it meeting all business and technical objectives established for the project. - Leon T. Anderson, CEO Read the letter from AgFirst s CEO about David-Kenneth Group s performance. Results After 12 months of effort with zero downtime, AgFirst s operating costs dropped significantly, averting $8 million in annual cost. Performance and reliability improved dramatically as did the capacity to increase services. AgFirst is now positioned to accommodate significant business growth and acquisition. What factors were behind AgFirst s decision to relocate their datacenter? We were out of room and our existing data center had unchangeable factors such as space and flexibility limiting service tiers regardless of money spent. We considered renovating our existing data center one floor at a time. The cost was estimated at $10-25 million, and it required a temporary relocation. Meanwhile, our data center flooded, and we realized that our potential $10-25 million project would not have prevented or mitigated the flood event. Ultimately, we started looking at buying land and found a great fit. What are the 3 most important lessons learned? 1. The rewards of keeping infrastructure current. 2. The value of having the right staff in adequate amounts. 3. Getting the right partners involved so that you don t try to do everything and/or rely on experts. What were the top 5 business benefits from relocation? 1. Ability to accommodate far more growth. 2. Flexibility to handle changes better. 3. A more secure environment and the ability to implement additional secure processes all around (facilities, upkeep, repairs, IT). 4. Better ability to handle disasters and business disruptions. 5. An improved platform to deliver services and value to associations (AgFirst customers). What impact did the David-Kenneth Group have on the success of your project? There were no impacts to customers or employees throughout the AgFirst District, which was a tremendous feat considering that more than 160 applications and 250 terabytes of data were moved. We could not have done it without your expertise and the hard work of your team. Source: David-Kenneth Group

5 5 The Migration Strategy Board The Migration Strategy Board is designed to help organizations understand the process of a data center migration. It is a simple rendering of David-Kenneth Group s data center migration methodology. The board is organized into the 5 phases of our methodology. It moves you through each phase, block by block. Each block includes objectives, deliverables, tools, and action items. This process is tested and proven to be successful. A copy of the Migration Strategy Board and a summary of our methodology are available for download on demand at Source: David-Kenneth Group

6 6 Legacy Defense Contractor Saves Millions by Consolidating Data Centers Summary After years of growth and expansion, this legacy defense contractor s data center population had organically grown to over 200 sites scattered coast to coast. A data center consolidation was their best option. They attempted to go it alone but made little progress with a burn rate of $1 million per month. The David- Kenneth Group was engaged to turn around the failing project. In the first 9 months of the project, 9 of those sites were closed, saving hundreds of thousands in hardware and software and immediate power and cooling savings in the millions. But, their success did not come without significant challenges. Thank you for a great run. You and your team have a lot to be proud of. The commitment and experience you brought to the table absolutely contributed to the overall success of our program. It was a pleasure calling David-Kenneth Group our team members. Program Director, EDM and Server Virtualization The Challenges Each site possessed its own standards, processes, and common services creating redundancies and inefficiencies. This, of course, resulted in more and more of their annual IT budget being spent on maintaining these disparate data centers. They needed to reduce costs, facilities, and complexities; improve energy management; and optimize standards and control. Many of their systems and infrastructure were operating 5-10 years beyond their end of life with an absence of documentation. After one year of effort not one site had been consolidated. With insufficient progress and a project team burn rate of $1 million per month, a different approach was required. More Challenges...and a Solution They surveyed the market for solutions and found the David-Kenneth Group. We offered a proven methodology that would save them time and money. Together, we reevaluated the consolidation project and determined that the revised strategy required an aggressive schedule due to the initial false start. Eight sites had to be completed in 9 months without interruptions in service. Three months into the project, the first of three company-wide layoffs began. We retooled the consolidation project again. Despite layoffs and budget cuts that affected the project, we consolidated 8 sites in 8 months. We were one month ahead of schedule allowing the team to migrate a 9th additional site. The Results The partnership produced the best performing project in the client s entire portfolio saving millions. The monthly project burn rate was reduced by 66% from the initial false start. Over 700 servers were retired without service interruptions, and floor space was reduced by 89.2%. As the project continued into the new year, dozen of other sites were consolidated, resulting in similar savings. In the end, both their strategic and tactical goals were achieved. They reduced their operating costs, improved energy management, and optimized standards and control. Source: David-Kenneth Group

7 7 From the Gartner Files: Data Center Migrations Five Steps to Success Without proper planning and processes, data center migrations pose huge financial and operational risks to organizations. Understanding the primary steps required in a migration project is key to identifying what you don t know and what resources will be required to prepare your project for success. Key Challenges Discovery of application service dependencies and business impacts is critical to a successful migration. Migration planners are challenged to develop a clear methodology for migrations, focused on business outcomes and risks. Management of continuous IT services availability is necessary throughout the migration. Lack of migration experience is a critical challenge to most project managers. Recommendations Obtain continuous senior-level management buy-in for the project duration. Invest in application service dependency mapping and risk assessments to drive the process. Communicate simplified business-focused metrics and results. Strategic Planning Assumption Due to improper planning, 70% of data center migrations will incur significant time delays or unplanned downtime. 1 Introduction Many organizations are planning the process of data center consolidation, relocating compute resources to another purpose-built facility, or migrating to a hosting or colocation facility. While we often see much effort undertaken to identify and quantify the capital and operating costs (or cost-benefits) of acquiring the facilities, what is often undervalued or overlooked is the difficulty of the migration project itself. With the exception of large organizations or ones with very active merger and acquisition strategies, most IT leaders who are assigned these projects have never done it before, and often they have nobody on staff with these skills. The last migration may have happened many years ago, and those responsible have either retired or no longer have the skills needed to run another project of this scope. Also, these projects might not have been documented in detail, both as a planning and execution tool and as an afterproject book of record for future reference. Due to these and other factors, 70% of data center migrations will incur significant time delays or incur unplanned downtime. Analysis One of the key misunderstandings about data center moves is that they are primarily about establishing an infrastructure and moving equipment. This couldn t be further from the truth. Yes, a strong infrastructure is needed, with a preestablished network and either equipment on the receiving end or equipment ready to be moved. But the intricacies of data center moves revolve around the process itself, not just around lifting and shifting equipment from Point A to Point B. While the process can be fairly straightforward, especially in highly virtualized environments, it involves a significant level of detail and will involve many people outside the traditional IT realm. In general, what follows are the keys to a successful data center migration strategy. The Five Steps to Success A successful migration strategy can be broken down into five major steps: 1 Initiation 2 Risk assessment 3 Planning 4 Execution 5 Closure

8 8 Initiation The beginning of a successful project is often one of the most important milestones as it sets the tone (and tempo) for the rest of the project. During this phase, the business case is developed, outlining the reasons for the migration: the costs, reduced equipment maintenance, improved support, economies of scale, less infrastructure redundancy, and most importantly, the business impacts and risks if the project is approved, or not approved. This is the phase where institutional ownership is assigned and where stakeholder buying is locked in (which becomes a critical factor during the execution phase). Next, identify what type of migration would be needed (for example, consolidation to one facility, transition to another organization or migration to a different facility) and how that will impact resource requirements and skill sets, some of which you will have internally, and others that will need to be sourced from an external provider. The types of migration are as follows; Consolidation Moving multiple data centers into a single environment, often consolidating workloads at the same time. Virtualization While not traditionally seen as a migration technique, using virtual technologies as a method of moving workloads (virtual to virtual) has become commonplace in highly standardized environments. Modernization Implementing an infrastructure modernization program as part of the migration process, often at the application level. While some organizations choose to modernize infrastructures during a migration, you must be aware that this introduces significant potential risk to the project as new untested equipment and technologies are introduced into the environment. Swing Using swing gear in the initial setup of the to be site. As move groups are executed, freed-up equipment is then relocated for subsequent moves. Lift and shift (sometimes called forklift ) For environments with dedicated equipment. We often see organizations using a combination of migration types, depending on asset life cycles, business risk and recovery time objectives. Risk Assessment One of the most important phases, risk assessment is often called the discovery phase, and it entails a detailed evaluation or audit of exactly what needs to be moved, when and how. This phase takes a detailed look at applications, network requirements, and most importantly, dependencies between applications and the cascade effects on application delivery and business impact if an application fails to migrate correctly. This is not about just identifying inputs and outputs and co-dependencies, but about interviewing business leaders and getting a clear understanding of the risk to business continuity. Clients who already have well-documented business impact analyses can use these as the fundamental starting point for a migration plan. Part of the risk assessment exercise is creating a stack ranking of applications (and their dependencies) and creating move sequences that minimize the risk to the company if something goes wrong during the move process. Most organizations migrate low-risk move groups first, with the assumption that something in the process will probably need to be corrected, and highrisk groups are moved once the overall process is solid and staff is well-trained in dealing with contingencies. Another important consideration can be the change, revision and/or patch levels of both the hardware and software. It is critical to ensure that no changes occur between the times that a set of equipment is moved from its current site to the time that it is brought up at the target site. By taking this approach, the root causes of any postinstallation problems that do come up can be more effectively identified and resolved. A secondary but no less important risk assessment exercise is determining the potential impact on your organization as a result of the migration. Decisions on where the new site will be, the modernization strategy, migration resource requirements and so forth can all have detrimental impacts on an organization if the myriad of issues regarding new roles, skills and training, commute times, and staff ratios are not addressed upfront. In most successful migration projects, the HR organization is one of the key stakeholders from the earliest days of the project. Planning The planning process is multifaceted and deals with pulling together assets, systems, interconnected services and personnel, and

9 9 linking them all within a move timeline that meets your business goals and complies with the chronological timelines of the business. Certain times of year may make perfect sense for complex moves, while others may be completely out of the question (holidays, financial market activity end of year/quarter and so forth). The first project step is determining how a migration will take place, or better yet, how many variations will take place. Some applications can migrate using virtualization; others might need a consolidation process, especially if multiple sites are involved; or in some cases, a forklift move would make sense. Modernization is also an option, where systems are upgraded or moved to new platforms as part of the process (a little more risky, but possible). For those with tighter budgets, or with IT assets that are still early in the depreciation cycle, a swing gear/leapfrog migration might make the most sense. Each of these move types has its advantages, but each impacts costs and timelines differently, so careful planning is required. Clear move groups are also developed during the planning process. Move groups are most often developed around common business criteria, shared software and/or data dependencies, or common technical requirements, but they can also be developed around latency requirements, bandwidth and/or performance. Test plans are also developed during the planning phase. These plans, when run prior to a migration, can be used to expose issues that might otherwise be attributed to the postmigration environment. Running them after the migration can verify success. Also, test plans can be used for pre- and postmigration benchmarking, as well as regression testing, which, in many closely watched migration projects, can provide the quantitative proof of success that project managers need. Execution The execution process may be completed over a weekend, or it may take a series of steps lasting 18 months or more, depending on the complexity of the move and the criticality of the applications being migrated. Key to this process, however, is thorough premigration testing of both the move process and the applications to be moved (baseline measurements). During the planning phase for move groups, a contingency strategy was developed that should be the initiating phase prior to executing a move. This becomes the last line of defense in case of major problems during a move. If planned properly, the migration itself should pose a minimum of problems outside personnel (performance) and materials (arrival and setup), but a proper migration plan will have taken these issues into account. Postmigration testing is then performed to ensure the business objectives were met and to close out this phase of the overall migration. Closure At the end of a migration project, the closure phase is often seen just as a cleanup operation and doesn t get the attention that other migration phases get. However, closure can have a significant financial impact if not done properly. Left unresolved, closeout is a potential land mine of hidden costs and expenses that will continue to impact IT. It involves decommissioning of all remaining assets at the old sites. This includes closing out service contracts on older IT equipment; packing and shipping that equipment; closing out software contracts no longer in use; degaussing leftover storage assets (including copiers); and cancelling vendor contracts for building management, maintenance services and supply delivery services. Lastly, if the old site was leased, decommissioning the space itself may be required to ensure it is returned to the building owner in compliance with the original contract terms. Bottom Line From a high level, these are some of the issues that migration planners need to be aware of to have a successful data center migration. A wellplanned migration often becomes a well-executed migration, and a well-executed migration is often much faster, end to end, than one that is run in an ad hoc manner. If project management skills and methodologies for migrations are not available in an existing organization, using outside expertise is a recommended option (see Note 1). Additional research contributions from Mike Chuba and John Morency. Gartner Research Note G , David J. Cappuccio, 26 March 2014 Note 1. Sample Vendors The Cavan Group PwC David-Kenneth Group Altus Technologies TDS

10 10 About David-Kenneth Group The David-Kenneth Group is a privately held, veteran-owned company whose main offices are in Annapolis, Maryland. Our core competency and singular focus is data center transformations. It s what we do all day, every day. Our data center transformation services include data center migrations, consolidations, and relocations. We help organizations determine the best strategy that meets their evolving technical requirements and business goals. Whether your data center transformation strategy includes infrastructure optimization, colo and outsourcing selection, or application modernization services, we guide you through the process without interruption to services. We are experienced in servicing Fortune 10 and Fortune 50 companies that provide critical services in high stake industries where downtime could equate to loss of life, national headlines, or critical loss in revenue. Contact Us Address: 1997 Annapolis Exchange, Suite 300 Annapolis, Maryland Phone: customercare@ davidkennethgroup.com Whether your data center strategy requires a simple or complex mix of transformation services, all of our people, processes, and methodology are purposed to help organizations achieve the attractive business benefits of a data center transformation. Completed over 50 Data Center Migrations from Coast to Coast in the last 12 Months A Data Center Migration: Does It Make Sense for My Organization? is published by David-Kenneth Group. Editorial content supplied by David-Kenneth Group is independent of Gartner analysis. All Gartner research is used with Gartner s permission, and was originally published as part of Gartner s syndicated research service available to all entitled Gartner clients Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. The use of Gartner research in this publication does not indicate Gartner s endorsement of David-Kenneth Group s products and/or strategies. Reproduction or distribution of this publication in any form without Gartner s prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. Although Gartner research may include a discussion of related legal issues, Gartner does not provide legal advice or services and its research should not be construed or used as such. Gartner is a public company, and its shareholders may include firms and funds that have financial interests in entities covered in Gartner research. Gartner s Board of Directors may include senior managers of these firms or funds. Gartner research is produced independently by its research organization without input or influence from these firms, funds or their managers. For further information on the independence and integrity of Gartner research, see Guiding Principles on Independence and Objectivity on its website,