Software-Defined Data Centers Might Cost Companies More Than They Save 173
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."
Re:IT the bottleneck? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. That doesn't mean that it's IT's fault. At my current workplace, we have 150+ people, and 2 IT people. Getting stuff through IT is slow. However, the problem isn't with IT - they don't get to set their own budget.
And low-calorie foods cause obesity (Score:3, Insightful)
Because when people read the label and see that the food is lower calorie or "more healthy"; they eat a larger amount of the food because they feel less guilty due to it being "more healthy"; and the additional consumption more than offsets the decrease in calorie count of the "healthier food"
So eating lower calorie foods makes you less healthy....
Not a 1:1 ratio (Score:5, Insightful)
Virtualization makes it easier to stand up a new "server." True.
This simplicity will lead to using more "servers." Granted.
But those virtual servers require far less hardware than the old physical servers. Many of these virtual servers are used only a small percentage of the time. Depending on the load, 10, 20, or even more servers can run on one physical piece of hardware.
So even if we use, say, five times more "servers" with virtualization, we will be using fewer physical units--fewer "resources."
In short, the math is not so simple.
Re:IT the bottleneck? (Score:5, Insightful)
As time marches on, people are becoming more IT literate
Hahahaha
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect [wikipedia.org]
Jevon's Paradox (Score:5, Insightful)
Jevon's paradox is valid, but only under specific economic assumptions.
It's only true so long as there is more demand for the resource, and it's only a problem when the resource has a cost attached. Essentially, it's true in a "scarcity" economy, but not true under "post scarcity".
We've achieved "post scarcity" for several resources already; for example, phone calls and computer time.
Phone calls used to be expensive and billed by the minute, but nowadays it's virtually free. Similarly, computer time used to be metered and charged - in college, the CPU time for each program run was deducted from your account. Nowadays people can have as much un-metered computer time as they want.
CPU time and phone service aren't literally free, but the cost is so small as to be negligible.
Despite this, we do not see infinite consumption. People have a certain level of need [wikipedia.org] for a resource, and when that need is met they stop consuming more. Coupled with a declining population, there is no reason to expect infinite consumption.
Your company may be using more resources than it needs... but so what? Computer resources are remarkably cheap - so cheap, in fact, that it may be more effective to ignore the problem. Optimize the biggest expenses first: if that turns out to be IT resources, then take a closer look. Otherwise, just ignore it.
(For another example of post-scarcity, consider the Chinese "dollar stores" that have cropped up. The cost of goods is so small that the time and expense of price tags makes a big difference. This is almost post-scarcity of tangible goods.)
Re:IT the bottleneck? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, IT's the bottleneck. Why? Because users who roll their own solution without understanding what they're creating will create a fragile business model.
Andy Accountant decides to do General Ledger on Quickbooks, while Polly Payables decides to do billing on the bank's web server. How does one update the other? It starts out as a manual process. But let's say Polly is clever and signs up for IFTTT.com to automate the integration. She also hands the task of entering the bills over to Carlos Clerical. Later, when Polly is on vacation, Andy downloads an upgrade to Quickbooks - but IFTTT was set up only to modify the original Quickbooks. Now Polly's billing doesn't work, and Carlos has no idea what's going on. Polly is the only support person, but she's on vacation. Andy only knows about the manual processes, so he can't help Carlos. So the bills don't get paid.
And the IT guy only knows about the PCs, the printers, the network, and the file server. He doesn't know about the apps, because the users got tired of waiting for him and rolled their own.
Repeat this scene for each and every system, service, and person involved with computers in the organization. It starts out easy and fast, but the dependencies quickly crust over every activity the company performs. Support becomes a nightmare, and changes go from "difficult" to "impossible".
If the IT guy put the pieces together, he (should) document the connections, provide troubleshooting knowledge, and at least know who to call for support. At least that's the theory.
Re:IT the bottleneck? (Score:3, Insightful)
Cost savings are irrelevant when the data centre operators are outright price-gouging.
The world’s largest tech companies have failed to justify their Australian pricing regimes, with a 12-month government inquiry into the matter finding that Australians pay more for products for little to no legitimate reason. In a report, the committee found that Australians pay anywhere between 50 to 100 per cent more for IT-related goods than our overseas counterparts.
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2013/7/29/technology/it-price-inquiry-spells-out-australia-tax [businessspectator.com.au]
Re:IT the bottleneck? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you had a response time of a week for issues, and you had to work enough unpaid overtime that you left rather than facing an intolerable work situation then quite obviously you were not able to handle it with the staffing at hand.
Love it. (Score:0, Insightful)
Grasping with both hands for relevance, aren't we incumbents?
Love that everyone's response at Slashdot is to call bullshit.
I can see the FUD streaming out of the sales marketing teams now, "better stick with us or who knows what'll happen..."
Re:IT the bottleneck? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yah, and that is why the "cloud" providers are less expensive. Do you really think there is a 7 figure EMC sitting behind an amazon storage node?
No! see apples to oranges again. For some reason its ok, for the cloud provider to run on cheezy hardware missing most of the "enterprise" features, but its not OK for random company to buy similar hardware.
Re:IT the bottleneck? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:IT the bottleneck? (Score:4, Insightful)
Someone once said that Europeans view time the way Americans view distance; 50 years is nothing to one, 50 miles is nothing to the other.
It's not always possible to cycle and still be productive at the other end.
Re:IT the bottleneck? (Score:4, Insightful)
They are becoming just IT literate enough to be a problem.
Any idiot can set up their own department server now. But that idiot won't know how to configure firewall rules, stop unneeded services or make sure patches are up-to-date.
Any idiot can move their data around on USB sticks and dropbox - and this will greatly increase productivity, as they subvert the frustrating demands of IT to keep all confidential data within the office and start catching-up at home and on the commute too. Until someone loses the stick or has their laptop stolen, leaving half your customer database floating around the street somewhere.
Re:Jevon's Paradox (Score:2, Insightful)
CPU time and phone service aren't literally free, but the cost is so small as to be negligible.
Despite this, we do not see infinite consumption.
CPU time and electronic communication (and data storage) are excellent examples of Jevon's paradox. The cost has become negligible, and in response consumption has increased to the point where almost all use of these resources is either completely pointless, or of benefit to society so marginal that is is difficult to measure.
It's almost too easy to start citing examples:
- High frequency trading - astronomical use of low-latency coms and CPU power to perform arbitrages whose payoff rapidly converges to the cost of the technology and capital used.
- 'Big data' - incredible technological and intellectual resources devoted to things like predicting what NetFlix people should have recommended to them, so that books and TV programmes can be sold slightly more efficiently and marginally more profitably.
- Social media - massive numbers of servers chugging away in Oregon, for a user experience which is only slightly more engaging than swapping chat or gossip by voice phone, SMS or face-to-face (and roughly 50c per month per user of ad revenue). Many of these servers exist only because of attempts by one company to compete with another in a market for nearly identical services.
- Large numbers of TV channels, mostly devoted to repeats, other forms of redundancy, pointless services like 'SMS chatrooms on TV', gambling games and low-budget attempts to sell completely worthless products to socially marginalized and/or mentally ill viewers.
- various forms of state and corporate surveillance by electronic means, which are largely ineffectual and serve only to force those people who have something to hide to make a minimal effort to circumvent them.
- handheld games on smartphones of similar complexity and user experience to those available in the 1980's, requiring many orders of magnitude more sophisticated hardware, which is used for a) eye candy b) system and platform overhead caused by bad design and programming c) various forms of encryption, authentication and DRM, in order to ensure that no-one harms innovation and creativity by 'stealing' a copy of Puzzle Bobble.
For Chris'sakes, people are walking around with extraordinarily powerful handheld computers, which serve one purpose and one purpose only - simulating the behavior of a printed book, with absolutely no advantage except weight and space IF AND ONLY IF you are going to read two or more books on the same journey to work and back (and this effect is pretty negligible until you are replacing three or four paperbacks).