• Investment World
• eWorld
• Catalyst
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest

L.N. Revathy

Putting in place your physical infrastructure, or simply the stuff that `powers IT', is a challenging task. Here's some help on how to go about it.

IF as the CEO of a company, you are drawn into a discussion on enterprise resource planning (ERP) or customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, you probably will have no reservations talking about these enterprise solutions. But if you are asked about the Network-Critical Physical Infrastructure (NCPI) concept, what will you do? Act as if you have heard about it somewhere or politely turn down the discussion by saying that it falls outside the IT domain?

NCPI, according to industry experts, is all about the stuff that `powers' IT. Despite revolutionary changes in IT and products over a period of time, the design of power infrastructure for mission-critical installations such as data centres and network rooms has changed little over the years. But the way in which the IT systems are deployed has created new power-related problems that were not foreseen when the powering principles for the modern data centre were deployed three decades ago. American Power Conversion (APC), which has been for long in the business of UPS products, forayed into the NCPI enterprise solutions space very recently. Its India Country Head, Anand Iyer, says the company's venture into this space is the result of a study done after meeting several CIOs (Chief Information Officers) and CTOs (Chief Technical Officers). During such meetings, APC inferred that in setting up large facilities and data centres, organisations faced certain impediments. "We identified 22 core challenges, which were grouped according to theme into five key theme areas — namely life cycle costs, adaptability, availability, manageability and maintenance. We chose to focus these themes on the data centres as these are considered the nerve of the IT industry," says Iyer.

The industry, as we all know, is an amalgamation of various component vendors such as suppliers of air-conditioners, cables, racks and accessories, dealers in computers and servers, etc. Incidentally, there is a lack of standardisation in this area and the complexities involved are often tremendous. The organisation will need a facilities manager to manage this space apart from an IT manager to handle the IT aspect.

In its bid to reduce the complexities on the infrastructure front, APC evolved this NCPI enterprise solution. "The entire approach is aimed at simplifying the infrastructure on which the organisations run so as to minimise the downtime. The downtime results in a certain amount of revenue loss and this has an adverse impact on the business," says Balu Pandian, Director (Marketing), Asia-Pacific region.

Consider a scenario like this: A company keen to invest in a call centre with a seating capacity of 500.

Initially, most organisations take up the opportunity, moved by the early mover advantage factor, without understanding the intricacies of the business. Companies are willing to invest huge sums although they are never sure whether they have invested only reasonable sums on infrastructure. Everyone juggles for opportunity.

A quick glance into the past will show that capacities have been overbuilt leading to a negative return on investment. "In a majority of the call centres, the diversity factor is just about 20 - 25 per cent," laments Iyer.

In the process of establishing huge capacities, organisations are forced to reckon with accelerated deployment of the infrastructure. Take a software company, for instance. It could place an order for 100 PCs (say with IBM) and the vendor would probably execute the order in a fortnight. If the company plans to scale up its operations and procures say another 500 PCs, it would probably have to take a building on lease. While the IT equipment can be got within a reasonable time, the problem would be on the infrastructure side.

Since different vendors supply the cable, transformer etc, identification of the problem could be difficult and time-consuming. "We have developed a unique solution - InfraStruXure (ISX). This is an architecture that provides an integrated solution to the NCPI concept. It is a modular concept," Pandian says.

Though the concept is in place, its criticality is yet to be felt here, as there are not many certified data centres. But obviously a new generation of adaptable power systems for mission-critical installations is beginning to emerge.

Picture by S.R. Raghunathan

lnr@thehindu.co.in

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication

Stories in this Section
On your mark, headset... go!

Copyright © 2004, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line