Insights
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Technology & Engineering
Working together
How to bridge the gap between facilities and IT departments
Interviewed by Matt McClellan
T
he “gap” between facilities and IT organizations has become an industry standard term over the years. While some
companies are making strides to overcome
this challenge, most struggle with this issue.
So, what is the gap? Simply stated, it is when
two departments don’t see eye to eye, and in
many cases don’t work well together.
Over the past few years there has been
a surge in the need for high-capacity and
high-density data center facilities to meet
the growing demands to store and manage
information. This is being driven in large
part by social networking, social media
and cloud computing services growing at
unprecedented rates. Data centers, unlike
any other portion of a company’s real estate
portfolio, requires input and support from
both facilities and IT management and staff.
“IT is in the business of managing information — how it flows at the application layer,
how it is transported, processed and stored at
the hardware layer, and how it is protected,”
says Rich Garrison, senior principal of Alfa
Tech. “That is done through a combination
of server, storage and network infrastructure
designed to deliver and manage information,
which in today’s information age is the greatest asset of most companies. Facilities are
all about managing the real estate portfolio,
space, power and supporting infrastructure.”
Smart Business spoke with Garrison about
how to create a more productive work environment in which these two departments can
work more effectively together.
Why is there often a gap between facilities
and IT?
The gap occurs because of several factors,
most originating from the human element.
First, IT and facilities speak different languages and often simply don’t understand
each other’s needs and priorities. Another
major contributor to the gap is that in most
companies IT and facilities are two separate
organizations with separate budgets, schedules and agendas with competing priorities.
Some companies have rolled up the two
groups into one organization to help align
the two groups. The fundamental problem is
getting those groups on the same page — or
even to speak to each another in some cases.
This leads to the more subtle interpersonal
issues, like pride and ego, that often get in
the way. It’s common for power struggles to
occur over who is controlling what, allowing
both sides to lose focus on what is really in
the company’s best interest.
Today’s server, storage and network hardware platforms are forcing IT to understand
more about power and cooling due to the
significant increase in density in recent
years. However, having IT staff responsible
for planning or managing space, power and
cooling is not always the best solution. They
usually end up getting it wrong, which can
result in unnecessary risks or even catastrophic failures of the data center facility
itself by not understanding the underlying
facilities infrastructure.
How can companies bridge the gap between
facilities and IT?
Rich Garrison
Senior principal
Alfa Tech
What are some consequences of the gap?
Employees become frustrated. They get
tired of beating their head against a wall,
make poor decisions and often are forced
to settle for solutions that really don’t meet
the business’s needs with respect to capacity, reliability and scalability. IT has a history
of asking for ‘more than they need’ when it
comes to space, power and other facilities
resources. This is often due to the fact that
long–term requirements are unknown, yet
IT must be able to support whatever comes
along. Some of these unknown factors may
include changes in technology, mergers and
acquisitions, changes in the companies’
products or services to name a few. Facilities on the other hand are pressured to ensure that real estate assets are cost effective
and operationally efficient. Therein lies the
gap, a gap in priorities, business requirements, budgets and management support or
direction.
At the end of the day, the company ends up
suffering because it doesn’t get the right solution or it spends too much money getting
a solution that meets the business’s needs.
We have seen IT groups choose colocation
simply so they can maintain control of the
data center, not because it was the most
cost-effective way to meet the company’s
data center demands.
In almost every instance where this gap
is an issue, the companies lack a strategic
plan for IT, facilities or both. When companies get serious about developing a formal
data center strategy they get much closer
to bridging this gap. One particular tool
I’ve developed to help bridge the gap is the
OPR (Owner Program Requirements) document. The purpose behind this document is
to facilitate a process to get facilities and IT
to stop thinking about technical solutions,
take a step back and start thinking about the
business requirements, corporate goals and
objectives. It then looks at the functional requirements of both organizations necessary
to meet these corporate objectives. Next is
to define in their own language the supporting technical and operational needs of both
organizations necessary to be successful.
This collaborative approach to developing
a strategy and plan has proven to be a successful method to begin to bridge this gap.
Getting the two organizations to collaborate and talk in their own languages while
finding that common ground is the point
of the OPR. It demystifies technology by
defining the requirements in terms both IT
and facilities groups can understand. For
a new data center project, this can be expanded to include a set of design considerations and criteria, written in more technical language that designers and engineers
need to understand.
When we see IT staff taking an active interest in understanding facility operations and
facilities staff take an active interest in understanding IT requirements, the results have
been positive and bring about successful
projects that deliver cost-effective solutions
for the companies they work for. <<
RICH GARRISON is a senior principal with Alfa Tech. Reach him at (408) 487-1209 or [email protected].
Insights Technology & Engineering is brought to you by Alfa Tech
© 2012 Smart Business Network Inc. Reprinted from the February 2012 issue of Smart Business Northern California.