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Your data center operations are one of the most vital parts of your company; you need to make sure they are in competent hands.
You want to eliminate risk, expenses and wasted time so that you can focus more on other core objectives that help you achieve your goals and grow your organization. When looking to streamline your data center operations, here are five steps you should employ to ensure that your data is always available, secure and reliable:
Make Sure the Process is Conveyed in an Operations Plan
By clearly laying out exactly what it is you plan to achieve and precisely how to do it, your data center operations team members will be better able to reach pre-determined goals. This is an extremely important step that should be accomplished early on by the organization. It is similar to the writing of a business plan when first launching a company. Without this, it will be easy to lose track of your end goals, and make constant improvements difficult.
Set Up Performance Indicators
You’ve paved the road but you need to know how far you’ve gone. You need to discuss how the quality and success of the service delivery will be evaluated, initially and then adjusting throughout the duration of the contract. After the process is defined, you need to set up key performance indicators, which will define the metrics by which your operations program will be judged. By setting up a method for measuring your progress, you will able to determine whether your strategy is working or not. If certain goals are not being met, then adjustments to the data center operations process need to be made.
Be Prepared for a Change in Scope of Work
Once you’ve establish that there is a successful data center operations strategy in place and you know how to measure it efficiently, it’s important to plan for your long term operational success. In critical environments, the unexpected can happen at any time. Having a long term plan in place can help seamlessly transition during these times of change.
What happens if there are facility expansions or additions in numbers of sites? You need to have a prepared strategy for any sudden growth so that you are not overwhelmed by rapidly rising needs. There should be no wasted time as you scramble to accommodate these expansions. This also means recognizing factors that could change the proposed scope of services.
Define Your Customer Service Needs
When you need to get a hold of your facility operations or vendors, are they easily accessible?
Something could come up at anytime of the day that would require you to need to get in contact with them. Even if they do not have around-the-clock assistance, do their hours mesh well with yours? Are they in the same time zones? Do they work quickly and efficiently to resolve issues that may arise that they are responsible for? These questions and more must be answered for you to be fully prepared.
Establish Who Your Go-To Experts Are
It’s well known that a majority of data center outages are caused by human error. This is why your personnel may be the most important component of your data center operations plan. You should have access to a team of highly qualified and experienced personnel that will be able to help you with any dilemma you face. Continuing education and training are important to guarantee that your experts are as qualified as possible. Make sure their certifications are up to date and that they have methods in place to continually hone their skills. This will help ensure your success.
