An alternative to the ‘confusion’ of DCIM

Q

Please can you provide some background on Trackit – when
was the company formed, why, who are the key personnel?

The company was formed back in 2008 to deliver data centre inventory and validation services. Providing Data Centre Audits is a highly specialised service that requires a very high level of detail and accuracy delivered quickly to ensure on going changes do not affect the integrity of the data.

The founding team consisted of both technical and development skills focusing on developing both a process and application designed to deliver fast, accurate results.

Q
How has the company evolved since 2008?

The company was originally formed to deliver data centre inventory and validation services. We quickly become the leader in our field and have audited over 1 million assets throughout the six continents Europe, North and South America, Africa, and Asia. (We’re still waiting for someone to nee d an audit in Antarctica).
Along the way we recognised a gap in the market as there were no Data Centre management tools that focused on the collection, management and validation of Data Centre Asset information in a simple and efficient package
To track IT accurately and efficiently, technology was required to improve the process, however, there was nothing out there so we decided to create the solution ourselves. We then realized that companies could benefit from using this technology internally and so we started offering Trackit for them to use to manage, maintain, validate and update their own environments in a very quick and efficient way.

Q
What are the products and services in Trackit’s portfolio?

We have several product and service offerings.

Trackit Mobile – is our original, award-winning mobile solution. It brings all the information about your Data Centre right in the palm of your hand. This solution is used in conjunction with the Trackit Enterprise Solution but can also be sold and integrated to be used as a front end to existing CMDB/DCIM solutions giving visibility of data on a portable solution.
Trackit Enterprise – is our multi-user, web-enabled DCAM offering. Everyone in the organization can view or maintain data from their desktop. Our powerful reporting engine allows customers to view their data any way they want. Trackit Enterprise synchronizes seamlessly with Trackit mobile to provide the best DCAM solution on the market.
SyncIT – is our flexible middleware tool. It allows customers to integrate Trackit Mobile with existing DCIM, CMDB, SM or AM.
Trackit SAAS – We also offer the Enterprise Solution as a hosted solution giving customers the ability to be up and running within hours on hardware supported 24/7.

Q
How would you characterize the USPs that the Trackit portfolio
offers when compared to competitive offerings?

Very simply, the Trackit solution is easy to implement and easy to use. Our customers can readily achieve a complete implementation, use all of the features, and achieve their ROI rapidly.
There is no realistic substitute for manually validating the Data Centre. Trackit reduces that effort by 90%, allowing for accurate data, and in turn, informed decision making.
Our goal is to be an alternative solution to complex DCIM Solutions, providing rapid return on investment and results through simplicity.
We provide customer the answers to the questions that enable and empower them to make knowledgeable decisions based on real data in the confidence that the data is accurate:
 What do I have in my data centre?
 Where is it located?
 What is it connected too? (Network & Power)
 What is my continuous U-Space….

Q
In more detail, what do the Trackit Mobile and Enterprise
products offer in terms of helping people run and manage
a data centre?

Trackit Mobile allows our customers to have all their Data Centre information right on the data centre floor - to troubleshoot issues, directly update changes, and record events and issues. Trackit Mobile reduces the effort of maintaining and updating data by 80% in the first instance and over 90% thereafter. It provides value to the staff that gather the data, and is an indispensable tool when out on the Data Centre floor.
Trackit Enterprise provides the central repository for everyone in the organisation to be able to view and maintain the data from their desktop. Users can manipulate all of the data contained within the tool to quickly build and deploy web-based dashboards, reports, and interactive analytics.
They can build, save, and manage their own views of their data, all while retaining control and security.

Q
Where do the LightTouch and SyncIT Middleware technologies
fit in?

LightTouch is our advanced validation technology. It allows us to validate the contents of a cabinet in seconds, using either barcodes or RFID identification. It allows us to quickly refine the accuracy of existing data to a very high level, and to provide a positive confirmation that the audit was performed properly with full audit trail.
SyncIT is a powerful and flexible middleware that enables customers to leverage investments other applications such as Service Management, Asset management and CMDB. It allows Trackit to operate as a front end, providing ease of use, visualization and reporting. SyncIT allows customers to extract existing data, validate it, and provide updates effortlessly. SyncIT can enable the update of several tools at the same time. It is an extremely powerful solution
Q
Trackit also offers a Data Centre Audit service – what’s the
thinking behind this, and how does the service complement
the DCIM product?

This was the Genesis of the company and was born from the frustration of deploying solutions that where reliant on high levels of data quality and accuracy. These projects failed to deliver expected ROI because the data going in was bad and ultimately decisions were made on inaccurate data, this has the knock on effect of confidence in a product being lost. A clean inventory is the starting point and key to good management. There is still no real focus within the DCIM space on the base line data going in to tools and the ongoing management, maintenance and validation of the data on a daily basis. Trackit can deliver this data quickly, efficiently and effectively to allow fast ROI and provide the toolsets to maintain and validate the inventory as part of the business as usual Moves, Adds, Change process.
Q
Does Trackit offer any other consultancy/professionals
services?

Along with Implementation and training services tailored to a customer’s specific requirements we provide Configuration and Process Consulting.
Due to our collective experience in the deployment of Audit, Asset Management and DCIM solutions we are uniquely qualified to provide consulting and insight in to industry best practice while ensuring that this is dove-tailed together with a customer existing process and methodology to deliver fast and seamless returns.

Q
The DCIM space is a relatively new data centre discipline, and
there are quite a few DCIM offerings out there – are they all
much the same, or are there various categories within the
space?

There are very few “complete” solutions conceptualized within the market and even those are far from being the all-encompassing solution that true DCIM promises – The umbrella from which all IT & Facilities will sit beneath.
In reality there are many point solutions that perform aspects of DCIM or are heavily focused on the IT or Facilities side of the umbrella and not both. The fundamental element that is required, regardless of what element of DCIM a customer is interested in or if they are looking for the DCIM nirvana, is having an accurate inventory and methodology in place to ensure the ongoing management and maintenance of that data. After all you can only manage what you know and even then only if you believe in the data that you are presented with..

Q
What are the key things to look for when evaluating DCIM
products?

No customer is “Vanilla” and it is key to understand what your key requirements are so not be caught up in the selling of features that, although nice to have or visually impressive, detract from the core requirements and data needed to successfully run a Data Centre.
Will you be able to implement, use and maintain the features the features the product offers?
What is your Budget?
Do you have the capability to realistically maintain the solution once it is deployed? How easy will it be for your existing resource to successfully maintain?
What are you able to politically implement? – Do Facilities and IT have a common goal within DCIM or are the requirements so different that a single, all-encompassing solution will not deliver for everyone.
Are you leveraging or replacing other investments that have been made?
Can you achieve the return on investment?
Q
How does DCIM contribute to creating an efficient, optimised
data centre environment – both from a facilities and
IT perspective?

Centralizes and consolidates data and communications.
Q
Can you share one or two recent customer success stories as
to how DCIM is helping them improve their data centre
environment?

We have helped many customers start over by providing them with an audit service, we have audited well in excess of 1 million Data Centre Devices within Trackit over 4 years. Whether implementing our products or another, a clean inventory should always be the starting point. Aside from that, a Multi-National Outsourcer using Trackit Enterprise to manage DCs, a Large European Telco implemented an innovative Cable tracking solution using Trackit Mobile/Enterprise, while a Large Global Bank reduces audit costs by 80%
Q
Trackit introduced a ‘new look’ at the Data Centre World event.
What does this entail/what differences will customers notice?

At DCW London 2014 Trackit showed off the latest version of the Trackit Solution demonstrating the power of having accurate data at your fingertips. The Solution was been refined over the past few years to ensure both ease of use and the depth of data required to help manage and maintain data centre environments.
Q
How does Trackit get its products and services to market at the
present time – and what geographical areas do you cover?

Trackit is sold via direct sales and channel partnerships that have been recently introduced, the channel sale via a leading global distributor (Anixter) to help get global visibility. Implementation, support and service delivery is handled by our US and UK professional services team with much of the services being delivered remotely. The future of the professional services offering and implementation services will be delivered by accredited and approved service delivery partners around the globe.
Q
Do you have any plans to expand this sales channel during
2014 and beyond?

Most definitely. We are in the process of designing the accreditation and certification program for professional services and support partners and this will be launched in the final quarter of 2014.

The sales route to market through the global distributor (Anixter) has a structured go to market strategy with over 17 events to showcase the solution around the globe starting with the Middle East events from March to May and progressing throughout Europe and into Asia the back end of 2014.
Q
Can we expect any new offerings from Trackit over the
coming months?

We are currently on version 7.4 of Trackit and are currently working on a new release of the product due 4th quarter 2014 that will include a new core platform giving advanced functionality for integrating with additional products, advanced multi tenancy features plus many more additional features.
Q
Do you think that most data centre end users are now aware of
the importance and benefits of technologies such as DCIM
in terms of helping them improve their facilities, or is there still
much education to be done?

I believe that most people are aware of DCIM but the confusion revolves around its definition. There is still education to be done within this space. DCIM means many things to many people and as a result people are unsure as to what they actually need. There is no magic DCIM button and there is no one solution that fits all.
There are alternatives to DCIM as the market dictates it to be and there are solutions that deliver answers to the questions Data Centre Management to answers too.
I think that if people step back and look at solutions that are simple and easy to use, maximize investment they have already made in infrastructure, deliver real decision making capability and are manageable they will see real results.
DCIM has no value if it is underpinned with inaccurate, low quality data. Trackit’s mission is to emphasise and educate data centre professionals of this importance. Inaccurate data and the difficulty in maintaining data quality are the biggest pitfalls seen by companies trying to adopt, implement and maintain DCIM solutions. Do you need DCIM? Does DCAM actually provide what you are looking for? In many instances organisations just need to know accurately what do I have, where do I have it and how much capacity do I have. To collect, maintain and report on this data in many cases gives all the information required.
Q
Put another way, are you pleasantly surprised or frequently
depressed when engaging with data centre customers in terms
of the environments you encounter?!

We are rarely surprised with what we encounter with customer environments, many legacy environments are managed using a combination of spreadsheets, Visio diagrams and “as built” drawings that in most cases are out of date. It’s always refreshing to find a customer that has good quality data being well maintained BUT this is a rarity.
Q
If you had one piece of advice for someone looking at
deploying DCIM within their data centre, what would that be?

Before looking at products/services/solutions clearly define a scope of what you are looking to achieve, what resources you have available and funds to support this. DCIM is not a point in time investment for both resourcing and financial but an ongoing commitment. The right tool for the right job and not trying to over complicate things with added features and functionality that is not really a requirement can certainly cause more harm than good and protract you away from the initial goal. Do you really need a DCIM solution or do you just need a way to understand what you have and what capacity you have left?
Q
Any other comments?

We at Trackit Solutions are a dedicated team of handpicked experts with of an array of knowledge and experience from working closely with customers of all sizes in many regions around the world. The company was born out of the pain and frustration of trying to implement complex DCIM solutions into environments that don’t necessarily require them. Our commitment and mission is to educate and provide a solution and service that acts as an alternative to the confusion of DCIM and help promote using technology designed for usability and providing results and return on investment fast. DCAM is what most organisations require even as a baseline or stepping stone that will lead them to full DCIM if this is a future requirement/aspiration but DCIM solutions on the market today rarely focus on the importance of easily maintained good quality data to underpin the solution. Bad data in Bad data out...