Efficient synergies between IT and facilities management

Jim White, is currently a business technologist with business service management vendor Managed Objects. Here he tells DCM that FM and IT are becoming closer If the whole is greater than the sum of its parts – is it also more efficient?  Perhaps.  The integration of facilities management and IT just might be proof.  Facilities Management (FM) and IT are two related yet independently managed parts of the business enterprise.  That might change however, as increasing pressure to contain costs and improve quality of service while simultaneously remaining environmentally responsible drives organisational interest to identify new synergies that lead to greater efficiency.  These pressures associated with cost, quality and the environment should not be underestimated.   Modern data centres, for example, consume vast amounts of energy to power IT equipment and to dissipate the heat they generate.  This trend will continue for the foreseeable future as business puts ever increasing demand on IT for processing speed, storage and availability.  In addition, rising energy costs and a weakening global economy will likely put additional strain on budgets – IT and facility managers alike will be forced to find ways to do more with less. Generally, IT managers are responsible for the day-to-day operations of a data centre to include among other things, service availability, cyber security, general maintenance and responding to the ever changing dynamics of business demand.  By contrast, facility managers have been traditionally responsible for building services, of which the demands can also be dynamic, including physical security and power – especially the availability of heating, lighting and cooling. One promising area of synergy between the two entities is the sharing of processes and tools.  To that end, the evolution of process frameworks such as the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) means IT now has an even more valuable contribution to make to FM and offers new possibilities in combining their functions in support of the efficient data centre. A key ITIL principle recognizes that managing IT from a business perspective is superior, in terms of quality of service and cost efficiency, than the traditional means of managing individual IT components like a server uptime or downtime. IT now has experience and tools that can be shared to their mutual advantage with FM to improve resource management and alignment with the business. Micro processing chips provide a good case in point where new developments have brought the ability to monitor power consumption and temperature. This affords the opportunity to optimize cooling to avoid waste or even the ability to throttle back power consumption when it is being provided in excess.  By the same token this new capability also allows load sharing through virtualization which diversifies processing strain and power consumption. Such new features represent significant opportunities for cost savings – but also overlap responsibilities that were once more neatly divided between IT and FM.  As such, critical decisions are best made not from the individual perspective of a single component, but rather in the larger context of the service that component is currently involved in providing.   For example, if the component is involved in running a critical application during peak demand hours, then it would be in the best interest of the business to ensure demand was maintained, by optimizing cooling requirements or enabling the service to be virtualised onto other more powerful machines.  This service perspective is currently provided by IT management technology that is probably familiar to IT operations and ITIL process managers called Business Service Management (BSM) – however, the recent expansions into power and cooling now merits consideration of how FM – and by extension the business – can share in the process, tools and subsequent benefits. Another ITIL concept and associated IT tool that could prove valuable to FM is the Configuration Management Database (CMDB or CMS). This is a repository that contains accurate knowledge of all the IT components – derived from multiple points of federated data – and especially how IT components are related and dependent upon each other. Typically IT can use the CMDB/CMS to conduct impact analysis on proposed changes to the IT infrastructure and thereby avoid making disruptive or business impacting changes. Yet there is also a clear application of this tool for the facility manager as well.  FM might tap into the CMDB/CMS to conduct impact analysis on a power supply prior to taking it offline for maintenance.  If the power supply is providing the energy source for a critical application, the application owner should probably be involved in the process and work with FM to develop and execute the maintenance plan. ITIL, BSM and CMDB are examples where existing IT processes and tools can be shared to advantage with FM ensuring optimal operation of the data centre and improved decision making.  Such synergies could lead to an example where the whole is more efficient than the sum of its parts. < Prev   Next >