Data Center

The days when data center strategy and selection were the sole concern of the real-estate guys have been replaced with the knowledge that distributed infrastructure and in particular, the proliferation of high density computing has a huge effect on the size and design of facilities and now, just as importantly, on the rising costs of energy consumption and associated environmental impact.

Citihub brings its deep knowledge of distributed infrastructure strategies to the table to help our clients better understand their future demand, make best use of existing facilities, lower energy costs, select and design new facilities and execute the non-trivial migrations of 100s of mission critical applications between facilities.
 

Strategy
Citihub provides a range of datacenter strategy services from capacity forecasting and planning to new data center requirements definition and business case creation.

• Internal strategy review
• Current estate assessment
• Capacity forecasting
• Requirements definition
• Business case creation

>> Data Center strategy for space-constrained, leading bank (case study)

Data Center Efficiency
Your data centers represent your largest investment in technology infrastructure. It’s key to get the most out of your existing real estate and technology assets to avoid the necessity of buying more space and minimize your energy costs and carbon footprint.

• Contract / vendor management
• Organisational behaviour
• IT application infrastructure
• Facilities efficiencies
• Data center automation

>> $30m cost avoidance for leading insurer (case study)
>> IDC Conference: Cost savings in the typical data center (opinion)

Site selection
Our data center selection services can provide you with an accurate and independent assessment of the market tailored to your specific facilities and technology requirements During the selection process itself Citihub can apply proven methodologies, such as AVD, to rapidly select the best fit service provider for your needs

• Solution sourcing options
• Market availability review
• Vendor and solution due diligence
• Vendor selection process
• Contractual negotiations

>> £26m cost avoidance for tier 1 bank (case study)
>> Data Center selection for leading bank (case study)


Migration
Over the years Citihub has planned and managed many highly complex global data center migrations affecting 1,000s of critical business applications.

Our migration services are based upon proven industry experiences which help mitigate the inherent risks of platform migration. Our aim is to ensure that your own migration proceeds smoothly, efficiently and within budget but at a rate that maximizes your investment in facilities.

• Application migration assessments
• Hosting pattern definition
• Application migration planning

>> 200 critical front office applications migrated to meet FED mandate (case study)
>> Asset management business migrated to new data center with zero business impact (case study)

Common migration pitfalls

• Assumption that everything can be ‘lifted and shifted’
• Too many programme dependencies; transformation, consolidation, setting the entry bar too high, becoming a CMDB programme
• Assumption that migrating Virtual Server instances is simple
• Not enough time allowed to plan and prepare before execution
• External connectivity (Market Data / TPNC) dependencies analysed and understood too late in the schedule
• Servers used as the primary reference to plan and execute migration