Are we all guilty of buying technology Turkey Twizzlers?

Added by Chris Gabriel, 7 months ago.

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We are a strange bunch us humans. Once a week we visit the supermarket, make straight for the frozen food section and destroy a highly efficient supply chain. The product is there because of a super efficient supply chain; grown, shipped to a factory, processed, packaged, flash frozen, stored, distributed in refrigerated lorries, warehoused in stock rooms, and finally retailed in shop floor chest freezers.

We, the consumer then buy them, drive them home in our cars and store them in our own freezers, just on the off chance that in the next 3 months we will decide that this brownish spiral looking thing is a must have midnight munch. We call this convenience food by the way!

We burn electricity day and night keeping resources (food in this case) available on the off chance we might need them at some point in the future.

Now were all nodding our heads and admitting that we are all culpable; culpable in fact for a total UK spend on household refrigeration energy costs of over £1.5billion a year; according to the Energy Savings Trust.

Now, if you run a data centre, or manage some of the technologies that sit in one you might be wondering what running freezers packed with products you don’t need has got to do with you.

The Turkey Twizzlers are in your fridge at 99p because from the minute the little egg was hatched to the point your taste buds went into overdrive when you picked them out of the freezer is a slick and seamless supply chain. The irony is that you as the consumer took a decision to buy the product on the off chance you might need it, took it home and back loaded a massive amount of inefficiency and cost into the process by storing it in your freezer for months.

IT delivery is also a supply chain. We build systems to deliver information and applications to our businesses, and we do it to a supply chain methodology. Our IT ‘consumer’ wants a new application so we source materials; servers, storage, operating systems, networks, package them together, and then deliver them into our corporate freezer, the data centre.

Like our box of fish fingers lingering half used, the processing and storage sitting in our data centres represent a high back ended cost in wasted energy, utilisation rates are embarrassingly low. When we deliver discreet servers running discreet applications supported by discreet storage we simply over purchase technology on the basis of us potentially needing it at some point in the future. We predict the technology munchies and buy more than we need because we buy discreetly and not based on our businesses overall requirements for processing, storage or networks.

If the CFO was to conduct an audit in your data centre and look for half empty freezer compartments how would you fair? If the CFO had this information when you next asked for a new server when they know your existing estate is only 15% utilised, or some more storage when you’re just about getting to 35% utilised, would you be knocking at the door with PO request in hand?

If IT is to remain a well funded supply chain, then what we output into the organisation must be as efficient as the products the business supplies at the front end; acquiring resources that may never be used, and powering and cooling them for years and years when most of that energy is being wasted is just no longer an option.

When you next pop down to the supermarket and look in the freezer section at something you think you might need, then just imagine the cost of taking it home and keeping it chilled for months on end and add that to the price of the product.

Now do the same to servers and storage products you buy and then imagine if there is a better way to rationalise the infrastructure you support and drive new efficiencies into the IT supply chain.

Anyway, I am hungry now, and I just fancy a re-constituted ball of chicken stuffed with a creamy garlic sauce……

Comments

There are currently 3 comments about this blog.

Zoie-Ann Megan Kelly, about 1 month ago

I Agree :)

Chris Gabriel, 7 months ago

And generally your fitness governs your agility, so flabby IT systems cannot react as quickly to business change. With the economy looking jittery for 2008, a fit, lean and dynamic IT environment is going to be essential.

Andrew McGill, 7 months ago

A good point, well made! To extend this particular analogy I never buy frozen food, particularly turkey twizzlers, as you never now what's inside them, and in the long-term they're bad for your health! In this context, it's the health of the company's finances and the environment!