Using SaaS to manage datacentres

It has been an age-old problem, but one that the cloud – and SaaS-delivered solutions in particular, now provide a useful short-cut. Smaller businesses often require the same capabilities and resources as their bigger, more well-heeled cousins, yet lack the money to buy in the products, technologies and necessary staff.

This is one of the most obvious arguments in favour of SaaS, though it still provokes doubts and uncertainties about areas such as management, integration and security. While those issues must never be ignored, the other side of the coin is that many new SaaS offerings now provide smaller business (and increasingly their bigger cousins) with point solutions to problems that would otherwise require specialist and generally costly products.

Take Datacentre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) for example. Being a smaller business does not mean its data management requirements are commensurately smaller. For many it can be quite the opposite. What is more, many of them may have an investment in datacentre equipment that is not yet amortised out, yet may be reluctant to invest in more management technology.

This is where the growth in SaaS-based DCIM point solutions is able to offer an alternative. One such is LiveDC, from N’compass, a Minneapolis-based business IT strategy firm. This is designed to help IT and facility managers acquire more accurate knowledge about the performance of their datacentre capacities in order to better meet current and future business demands.

It provides a historical and real-time comprehensive view of power, cooling, space and other assets within a datacentre, or multiples thereof. As a SaaS service, of course, it also means users do not need to acquire the software, just subscribe to using the service. There is also no need to hire specialist staff or introduce new training programmes.

Live DC is designed to deliver powerful, real-time information in the form of visualised data metrics such as power consumption, space and cooling. The software allows companies to optimise the datacentre performance to meet their specific requirements, such as reducing operating costs, reducing energy consumption, or better management of assets and space.

In addition to LiveDC, N’compass can also offer a board range of consultancy services based on its existing expertise.