Question: How can IT and Facilities work together to ensure both the operations of a data center and the corporate objectives are met without impacting individual goals? Answer: DICM Process Management Software and Automation
Today’s data center is supporting new use-cases designed to enhance collaboration, improve the business process, and create a more productive environment.
With these new use-cases, the modern data center has become a much more complex entity. For example, DCIM tools have been around for some time, but these tools are now involved in numerous aspects of the data center control process. Data centers are now segmenting DCIM capabilities into business units and more intelligent data center management.
PM (Process Management) is often a point of connection within a company between the line-of-business (LOB), IT department and Facilities. Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) and Business Process Management Notation (BPMN) were both created to facilitate communication between IT, Facilities and the LOB. Both languages are easy to read and learn, so that business people can quickly learn to use them and design processes.
There are three different kinds of PM frameworks available in the market today. Horizontal frameworks deal with design and development of IT processes and are generally focused on technology and reuse. Vertical PM frameworks focus on a specific set of coordinated tasks and have pre-built templates that can be readily configured and deployed. Full-service PM suites have five basic components:
- Process discovery and project scoping
- Process modeling and design
- Business rules engine
- Workflow engine
- Simulation and testing
Process Management Solutions
Trellis – Process Manager
The Trellis Process Manager makes sure your processes are running the way they’re supposed to run, including the necessary approvals for making changes to the data center infrastructure. It contains out-of-the-box templates for core data center processes, to ensure best practices are followed when making changes; those templates can be customized as needed to reflect your organization’s workflow. It even automatically updates, ensuring your data center infrastructure management (DCIM) plan is always accurate.
Sunbird – Change Management
Sunbird’s dcTrack® DCIM software provides powerful and intelligent tools for workflow automation. The solution enables you to generate change requests, automate device moves, and maintain a complete audit trail of requests and work orders for compliance.