What’s great about social networks, says Gary Bunyan, Global DCIM Solutions Specialist at iTRACS, is that everyone gets the same information at the same time. In his monthly usability column for Data Center Knowledge, Gary writes, “Where else do you see this highly efficient level of information sharing? You can leverage data about your data center when you’re using DCIM tools to manage your physical infrastructure.”

Is Gary saying DCIM is a social network?  Not exactly.  But he sees close parallels in how information is socialized.

“I’m not saying these tools offer the same experience as a social network,” Gary explains. “But in many respects, they accomplish the same thing. DCIM with Interactive 3D Visualization spreads or socializes information to everyone, instantly and efficiently, eliminating the walls – or silos – between people, efficiently opening up new paths of communication.”

The walls to which Gary refers are between IT, Facilities, and Building Management Systems, and those walls have been standing there, in many organizations, for a long, long time. Tearing them down isn’t easy. But DCIM with Interactive 3D Visualization offers a single point of management in which everyone shares the same rich database, automated DCIM toolset, and what-if scenarios for predictive analysis. Information is socialized across departments, roles, and skill sets. As Gary puts it, “Comprehensive, holistic information about the entire physical ecosystem is made available to all data center constituents. And this isn’t just information – it’s information that everyone can instantly understand and act upon.”

DCIM with Interactive 3D Visualization socializes complex information about interconnectivity in an easy-to-use, visual, “point and click” environment. It validates the axiom, a picture tells 1,000 words. Says Gary, “It’s a great way to socialize content, especially content about complex interconnectivity. Everyone works in the same easy-to-use single-pane view of the ecosystem. Everyone has access (albeit with varying degrees) to the same rich repository of data about assets, power, space, time, connectivity and process.”

DCIM with Interactive 3D Visualization is a very efficient environment for democratizing information and fostering collaboration. It’s concise and knowledge-rich. It knows what executives need and want in a DCIM decision-support tool. It puts everything in an interactive visual context that is instantly meaningful and actionable – simply point, click, and manage.

But let’s not get carried away. It isn’t the Facebook of the data center … yet.

Interactive 3D Visualization from iTRACS helps to answer the age-old question about usability, a question that’s of great relevance in the Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) world today:

Will your DCIM tool work for you – or are you going to have to work for it?

The unequivocal answer with iTRACS is that the tool will work for you, according to Gary Bunyan, iTRACS Global DCIM Solutions Specialist.

In his “Notes from the Road” column for datacenterknowledge.com, Gary says that the iTRACS Converged Physical Infrastructure Management™ (CPIM™) platform with Interactive 3D Visualization turns data into rich 3D information that is instantly understandable, meaningful, and actionable.

Gary says the value of the iTRACS user interface is its usefulness.

In his datacenterknowledge,com column, he explains, “One root of the word ‘usability’ is to be ‘of use.’ When you’re attempting to manage millions of dollars of IT assets in one of the most complex entities on earth – the modern data center – you don’t need a pretty user interface which, when you pull back the covers, is lacking in usefulness. You need an interface that helps you get the job done – directly helps you manage the complex web of interrelationships between the thousands of IT and Facilities assets sitting on your data center floor.”

Gary also points out that a DCIM user interface like iTRACS can serve many masters across multiple departments including IT, Facilities, and Building Management Systems. This is vital, since each DCIM user has his/her own requirements and expectations.

“The CIO needs something different from the Data Center Manager, who needs something different from the Technical Ops team, which needs something different from the Business Units and other ‘clients’ of the data center,” says Gary. “Everyone wants DCIM to meet their own specific information and management needs, with dashboards customized just for them. Dashboards with deep-dive analytics for making informed decisions – the kind of decisions that justify the investment in DCIM to begin with.”

As Gary points out, in a usability scenario this diverse, a robust user interface like iTRACS brings everyone together:

• Everyone has a single-pane, open systems view into the entire physical infrastructure – IT, Facilities, and Building Management Systems assets
• Everyone has access (albeit to varying degrees) to the same rich repository of data about assets, power, space, time, connectivity, and process

“From this perspective,” Gary concludes, “usability isn’t about how much the individual user can get done. It’s about how much the whole enterprise can get done.”

Gary Bunyan, Global DCIM Solutions Specialist at iTRACS, knows a thing or two about data centers, DCIM, and what makes one DCIM tool more usable than another. Based in London, he works with data center owners and operators around the world to help them optimize the performance, agility, and availability of their physical infrastructure. Recently, Gary began writing a series of columns for datacenterknowledge.com about “the user experience” as he traverses the globe working with buyers, managers, and users of DCIM.

Gary says he’s constantly asked about iTRACS’ Interactive 3D Visualization environment and how it offers a superior user experience and therefore a more useful and productive DCIM tool. He says it’s about turning data into usable, actionable information. Here is an excerpt from Gary’s January, 2012 column as he explains his perspective on what make the iTRACS user interface so unique:

“You can’t get the job done if you don’t have the information you need to make informed, knowledge-based decisions that drive positive business incomes. You need efficient (easily and readily available) access to the information required to accelerate not just decision-making, but smart decision-making.

Interactive 3D Visualization offers a very usable solution. Interactive 3D Visualization lets you manage the whole of the physical infrastructure using a visualized 3D model. You literally point-and-click through this model, navigating through the data center to manage assets, power, space, connectivity, and other dynamics across both IT and Facilities. Talk about a user experience – Interactive 3D Visualization lets you tour your global portfolio of data centers, literally ‘walk’ through your facilities, from a browser.

By contrast, a more static user interface that provides text, spreadsheets, and static 3D images may look pretty, but ultimately, it creates more issues than it solves. Because no matter how clever it may look and operate, the user is still stuck with fragmented chunks of data that must be deciphered and put into some kind of context before they can be truly understood.

Data without context = a user interface that isn’t of much use.

As many data center executives have said to me, Interactive 3D Visualization isn’t just a pretty picture. It gives you the context critical for democratizing information and socializing management tasks at the operational level. Absent this, your time will be spent justifying your decisions with your peers instead of executing them.”