Romonet's Portal 2.0 Targets True TCO Measures for IT Services

Estimating IT costs in the data center is a headache Romonet is looking to relieve with Portal 2.0, an updated version of its SaaS-based data center performance and lifcycle management software suite. The suite brings together an in-depth view of facilities, IT and business to swiftly, simply and intelligently forecast, plan and track business performance.

Romonet wants to eliminate the historical practice of estimating IT costs, which makes it impossible to judge whether the data center is actually working as expected.

"Management by exception has proven invaluable to the success of many businesses: bringing it into the data center is a logical step," said Zahl Limbuwala, CEO of Romonet. "Portal 2.0 removes the headaches traditionally associated with capacity planning and cost modelling, allowing organizations to focus on the investment decisions that will best help their business."

With Portal 2.0, users can predict, analyze, and continuously improve the performance of the data center, minimizing the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Businesses have an immediate view into how efficiently it is managing and utilizing its data center infrastructure spend.

Predictive Modeling

Portal 2.0 adds a new operational capability using the same predictive modeling technology currently employed by Romonet. The portal has the ability to compare "expected vs actual" performance down to individual sub-systems, enabling quick identification of operational issues so they can be fixed before they impact service. Romonet's perspective is that it's the quality of the information, rather than the volume, that makes the difference in data center cost.

The ability to reveal the true costs of IT services means it can prevent the data center from becoming a cost black hole: absorbing investment with no clear indication of how that investment benefits the business. For service providers, understanding total delivery costs means they can ensure that they understand margin per client or per service.

"DCIM and sub-system metering has become very popular in the data center as operators grapple to manage the reliability & performance of their increasingly complex and costly data centers," said Limbuwala. "However having actual metered data at such a granular level without knowing what each meter ‘should’ be reading can actually lead operational teams into a false sense of security. With Portal 2.0 deployed on top of a DCIM/metering solution operational teams can now see an ‘expected’ value against each sub-meter. Ultimately this allows operators to quickly spot divergences in performance anywhere in the system and stop potentially service disrupting issues before they occur. That’s the true power and nature of predictive analytics.”

The company says that unlike many DCIM solutions, Romonet’s Portal 2.0 can be deployed and delivering value in days without disruptive and costly hardware or software agents. “Typically we can model any running data center in no more 3-5 man-days and have them up and running in Portal getting value in under two weeks” said Limbuwala.

Romonet Portal 2.0 helps organizations in the following ways: