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

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."

Comments

Re:IT the bottleneck?

[Zaelath]

As time marches on, people are becoming more IT literate

Hahahaha

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Re:IT the bottleneck?

[theshowmecanuck]

We allowed a senior developer to manage his own AWS EC2 instance for development of a server. Then we noticed a few hundred gigs of data were moving through the server when he wasn't around. We shut it down and audited it. There were ports and security vulnerabilities exposed that just shouldn't have been, because he had set it up to be easy for development etc etc etc. The IT bottleneck was removed. So was a good chunk of money from the company paying for some people at a number of Chinese IP addresses to move data through our servers (that costs on cloud services ya know). Just because people know how to make things work, doesn't mean they know how to do so safely. Nor does it mean they have the inclination to learn to do it safely either. I don't like data Nazis any more than the rest. But they serve a purpose that no-one else is willing to take on. Let the average computer users control things, and your company will be fucked.

Re:IT the bottleneck?

[uncqual]

But, keeping three copies of the data on cheap hardware, one of which is hundreds of miles away and having a couple other data centers to which the data migrates in seconds and minutes is within the scope of a cloud provider -- just business as usual (the exact number of data centers and copies is irrelevant as they depend on this years stats for the low cost hardware - it's all statistics).

A business whose business isn't to maintain ten(s) of data centers and manage them for redundancy may not be willing (nor, probably, should they) to pay for that level of redundancy just for their own ten terabytes of important data (their business is making innovative widgets efficiently, not managing geographically distributed data centers, each with a connection to at least two independent power sources plus backup generators).

If a midsized business making drywall needed another car to transport a sale person, would they build an auto plant to build that car? No, they would lease the car from a business whose business was leasing cars (and providing replacement cars and maintenance) and who, in turn, bought them from a specialist in designing and making cars (Toyota for example).