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Collective Technologies, a leading provider of enterprise-class IT infrastructure services and solutions, today announced its Data Center LifeCycle Management solution. This integrated collection of IT infrastructure, physical layer and relocation services helps companies analyze, plan, build, expand and/or relocate facilities to create "adaptive data centers" that can handle the quickly changing demands of business and technology. Recent business trends -- globalization, 24x7 availability, virtualization, governance issues, and heightened security concerns -- along with technology trends -- a ten-fold increase in power requirements due to high density servers, clustering and virtualization -- are placing enormous demands on corporate IT infrastructures. At the same time, IT budget expenditures are increasing as a significant IT refresh is underway. All of this is causing a growing demand for new data centers. IT and facilities personnel must work in tandem with the business stakeholders they support to ensure the complex tasks of data center planning, design, relocation, and construction have the flexibility to reflect companies' ongoing and future needs, while remaining cost-effective. "With the economic downturn well behind us, enterprises are spending more and more to update data centers with technologies that match their changing business realities," said Richard Ptak of IT analyst firm Ptak, Noel & Associates. "Historical IT strategies involved wedging new equipment into existing data centers or simply adding more space, but that approach won't work in today's climate. To realize the full potential of data center technologies, companies must design facilities that can adapt to ongoing IT infrastructure and application requirements which stem from core business strategies." Collective has provided more than 5 million consulting hours of complex IT infrastructure services over the past 12 years. The Data Center Lifecycle Management (DCLM) solution takes advantage of this extensive IT infrastructure expertise to create a set of proven, process-oriented services that help companies navigate through mission-critical changes in their data center environments. Services include data center analysis and planning, design and build, relocation, and ongoing evaluation. Collective's approach takes a holistic view of data center change events and ecosystems of various vendors (real estate, OEM, planning, construction, etc.) to coordinate the management of complex IT projects and enable companies to expand, operate and evolve their data centers in an adaptable, cost- effective manner. The DCLM solution controls costs by ensuring that companies do not overprovision, but build flexible facilities that address their near- term needs. Columbia University, an early DCLM customer, chose the Relocation Service Module to move general purpose servers, high performance computing clusters and peripherals from five facilities into one data center. "Collective's solution was just what we needed to handle this complex project," said Megan Restuccia, program manager at Columbia's C2B2 Center. "The new consolidated data center they helped us achieve is much more in line with the university's current and future technology requirements." In another March 21 press release, Collective announced its partnership with BRUNS-PAK which enables Collective to integrate the critical design, build and commission services into its DCLM solution. Mark Evanko, BRUNS-PAK's president and principal engineer, said: "Collective's end-to-end approach to data center management is the right solution in today's dynamic corporate environment. We share their vision for strategic IT planning and look forward to working together to achieve that vision for joint customers." To ensure the best approach for each customer's requirements, the solution is divided into four service modules: * Data Center Analysis and Planning -- Provides a detailed analysis of an organization's current and future data center needs, including an accurate inventory of the computing and network infrastructure, application mapping and a roadmap of projected future computing needs. This information is then compared to the current physical infrastructure and the client's budget, goals and objectives to determine the recommended course of action, whether it be retrofitting of current facilities, building new ones, or relocating to a third party facility. * Design, Build and Commission -- Executes the design and construction recommendations from the Data Center Analysis and Planning service in a modular approach. This enables companies to commit only the capital necessary for the short term and grow their facilities as their IT infrastructure needs expand. Also, intense testing and certification ensure that data centers are operating optimally from the outset. * Relocation -- Plans and executes data center relocations, consolidations and migrations. Data center moves are infrequent and specialized events. Collective has more than a decade of experience managing these moves, from the relatively simple to the incredibly complex. The company's trained and experienced project management teams coordinate all facets of data center moves and offer a single point of contact for the customer. * Periodic Data Center Evaluation -- Quarterly updates to the high level data center strategy. Also serves as an early warning for future changes to the data center that will be required. "At Collective, we believe companies must embrace a concept we call the 'adaptive data center,' facilities that can change quickly to meet the volatile demands of business and technology," said Ed Taylor, CEO of Collective Technologies. "Our Data Center LifeCycle Management solution enables companies to achieve this goal by synchronizing their IT infrastructure with the business it supports so companies can optimize their technology investments."