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Software-Defined Data Centers Might Cost Companies More Than They Save

Posted by timothy on from the bottlenecks-and-gradients dept.

storagedude writes "As more and more companies move to virtualized, or software-defined, data centers, cost savings might not be one of the benefits. Sure, utilization rates might go up as resources are pooled, but if the end result is that IT resources become easier for end users to access and provision, they might end up using more resources, not less. That's the view of Peder Ulander of Citrix, who cites the Jevons Paradox, a 150-year-old economic theory that arose from an observation about the relationship between coal efficiency and consumption. Making a resource easier to use leads to greater consumption, not less, says Ulander. As users can do more for themselves and don't have to wait for IT, they do more, so more gets used. The real gain, then, might be that more gets accomplished as IT becomes less of a bottleneck. It won't mean cost savings, but it could mean higher revenues."

2 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. IT the bottleneck? by cosm · · Score: 4, Funny

    GTFO.

    --
    'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
    1. Re:IT the bottleneck? by OhANameWhatName · · Score: 2, Funny

      At my current workplace, we have 150+ people, and 2 IT people

      As time marches on, people are becoming more IT literate and IT is becoming more people literate. In 20 years, those 2 IT people will be sitting in the basement playing Halo 16 justifying their existence by requiring a backup person to hold the passwords for the network infrastructure.