Processor.com: The Changing Face Of Hardware Acquisition

So much to buy, so little cash.

That all-too-common complaint is still the bane of data center owners, making procurement—and above all the procurement of new hardware—a shifting target. What’s the right tool? What’s the right price? Where do we direct the budget we have, and what do other data centers do?

Now more than ever it pays to know what’s driving hardware acquisition and why, not to mention what’s disrupting it.

What’s Driving Hardware Procurement
So much to buy, so little cash.

That all-too-common complaint is still the bane of data center owners, making procurement—and above all the procurement of new hardware—a shifting target. What’s the right tool? What’s the right price? Where do we direct the budget we have, and what do other data centers do?

Now more than ever it pays to know what’s driving hardware acquisition and why, not to mention what’s disrupting it.

Has Open Source Opened Procurement?

In times past, the hardware you bought was determined, by and large, by your software. The problem was especially true of database systems, including applied database tools such as CRM (customer relationship management) and ERP apps, which in their larger forms ran only on specific platforms.

But according to Tim Loring of Akibia, which helps clients in 20 countries run their data centers and offers a vendor-neutral, technology-agnostic procurement service, the rise of open source is changing that—and will keep changing hardware procurement patterns for months.

Among those patterns, of course, is the array of architectures that open source offers to the small and midsized data center. “Now that the Oracles and the SAPs also run on open source,” says Loring, “it does put more choice in the hands of the user, so they can choose if they want a completely open-source architecture, a hybrid of open-source systems, or whatever they like.”

Take MySQL (www.mysql.com), for instance, which is slowly eroding SQL Server’s (www.microsoft.com/sql) market share and runs on x86, AMD, Power-PC, SPARC, and UltraSPARC architectures, to name just a few. It also supports clusters.

But it’s not just the greater choice that open source affords that drives its adoption—and drives, in turn, a wider selection of new hardware. Patrick Zanella, technical product manager for Akibia, says that he sees data centers “moving more towards the open-source solution because of, No. 1, cost.” He also argues that open source, as both a model for software production and a model for business distribution, has matured in the last year, leaving many IT managers less wary of using it.

The Problem With Heat

Open source isn’t the only disruptive issue on the horizon. Heat is. And according to industry experts, it may continue for years.

As the cost of cooling dense racks of blade servers continues to rise, eco-friendly, low-heat systems are gaining traction. Take Sun’s T servers (www.sun.com), which, according to Sun, consume 30% less power and 30% less cooling, yet offer throughput equal to or beyond the competition.

“I think that certainly changes the game,” says Zanella, “because it forces folks to take a look and say, ‘Hey, this server uses less power than a light bulb to run.’”

And with the need to reduce heat comes the need to reduce servers. Loring and Zanella believe the days of one app/one server are on the wane. Instead, data center owners are buying fewer machines and buying them in their most basic configurations—“pretty much minimally configured,” in Zanella’s words—then upgrading them to cope with expanding needs and applications.

“We’re finding that a lot of users, after they’re installing their systems, they’re installing more applications,” he says. As they grow, they add components, CPUs, memory, and bigger drives, “to maintain the level of delivery that their users are expecting.”

Money Matters

Gone as well are simplistic ways of looking at hardware costs. The initial cash layout—whether it’s $5,000 or $500,000—is just one part of the equation. Now, ROI models and long-term expense issues factor into the mix. “Those are premium questions that are asked up front, even before they even look at it,” says Loring. “People are looking at the overall total cost of operation.”

“We’re now seeing that users are trying to ask, ‘What will it take me to operate that system for the next 12/24/36 months?’” notes Zanella. “How much is it going to take me to power that system, cool that system, house that system?”

In the end, that means the most disruptive technology is not a new technology at all. It’s cost, as it always has been and perhaps always will be.

As the saying goes, so much to buy, so little cash . . .

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