HP ProLiant 3000 Server Consolidation with Compaq ProLiant Servers - Page 3

Server Consolidation with Compaq ProLiant Servers 3 The act of balancing many problems simultaneously forces IT organizations to be reactive, ultimately spiraling costs out of control Server consolidation stems from the acceptance of industry standard systems and the need to reduce the total cost of ownership ECGO30/0499 Introduction to Server Consolidation The IT Balancing Act Many IT professionals find themselves carefully balancing many problems simultaneously, in an attempt to prevent systems and productivity from crashing down. Forced to respond to the disparate needs of the many departments they support, IT specialists often struggle to meet the requests of their organization. A common method of reacting to changing demands involves adding equipment. This procedure often solves immediate problems, but later reveals unforeseen consequences. Like a clumsy dance, this balancing act tends to trickle down to one common industry problem - out of control costs. The Trend towards Standards Industry wide trends reveal that most major corporations are migrating from custom designed, proprietary platforms to more economical, standardized systems running fewer operating systems. Beyond the obvious cost savings are powerful benefits such as highly expandable systems and easy to use shrink-wrapped applications. These trends stem from IT organizations' growing need to reduce the total cost of ownership of servers, storage and labor while maximizing processing power. Together, these trends have led to the demand for highly available consolidated systems that enhance the ability to respond to new business challenges. Server Consolidation Defined - From Many to Few Server consolidation involves optimizing resources to increase staff productivity and reduce labor requirements, reducing total costs. Placing systems at core locations enables IT organizations to effectively respond to emerging business challenges, simplifies data management, reduces space requirements and helps control the overall cost of ownership. As the world's largest computer supplier of Industry Standard computing platforms, Compaq is able to provide the most reliable and cost-effective server consolidation solutions. Compaq servers lead the industry in reliability, are designed for optimal space utilization, and include tools that empower IT staffers with the ultimate in manageability. The primary benefits of consolidation involve reducing costs and increasing reliable access to data and computing resources. Server consolidation can help contain the following costs: • Personnel productivity: centralized server management leverages precious IT resources, improves response times, and decreases server down-time • Data control and security: server consolidation provides more consistent and reliable access to data • Hardware costs: equipment standardization leads to economies of scale as maintaining smaller numbers of servers reduces overall hardware costs • Software licensing fees: reducing the number of servers required to support clients means fewer application licensing fees