Supply chains can reduce server wastage

Better use of the supply chain can improve return on storage and application servers

Better end to end IT supply chain management can minimise under utilisation of storage and application servers, say experts, leading to significant savings on wastage.

A white paper entitled ‘Re-engineering the IT Supply Chain’ written by Professor Paul P. Tallon of the Carroll School of Management at Boston College, concludes that the IT supply chain is one of the few areas that have yet to re-engineered to improve efficiency, with users over provisioning their requests to make sure they get the resources they need.

“If there is a belief that requests will not be handled in a timely manner, individuals are more likely to build a buffer or reserve capacity into their resource pool,” wrote Tallon.

This ‘padding’ can be minimised by ensuring an effective exchange of information between all points along the supply chain, making sure users know the cost of over estimating IT utilisation, and building service level agreements (SLAs) that guarantee that individuals will get the storage and application resources they need, when they need them, argues Tallon.

Paul Hammond is the UK managing director of IT consultancy firm Glasshouse Technologies. He believes that the same ERP and MRP solutions currently being effectively wielded by the retail and manufacturing industries could also provide the solution to IT supply chain problem, however.

“If you look at some of the software available for asset management being used by facility management and oil companies, you could see IT start to look much more like plant machinery, with the same MTBF, lifecycle management and servicing for instance,” he said.

“Whether you can morph those across to IT is debatable, but the same principles and workflow can be applied.”