What Does Your Data Center Do?

Define & Market Your Data Center To Employees
Although data centers regularly reap respect from technical employees, others see them primarily as sounding boards for all their computer problems. Ask data center managers, and you’ll discover this distinct lack of respect is frightfully common. However, many of those same managers aren’t doing much about it.

Just as a business markets products to potential customers, it can also market its data center to its own employees, so they understand the complexities involved with building, running, and maintaining the center. Not only can this in-house marketing ease the frustrations inherent with the tech support process, but it can also open the door to new ideas spawned from employees who now see opportunity in a segment of the company they didn’t previously comprehend.

Find The Function

Effectively opening a data center’s door to employees requires more than simply grabbing a handle and pulling. Before a company explains to employees what its data center does, it needs a clear understanding of its data center’s purpose and how its activities affect each employee, from the newest hire to the CEO. Because most data centers serve to satisfy multiple needs, including storage, security, networking, and logistical parameters such as space, cost, accessibility, and others, this process can take time.

EMC’s data center personnel can use this internal company newsletter to illustrate technologies used in the company’s data center.

A data center manager should be able to concisely chart or outline the varying uses of the data center, placing adequate emphasis on processes deemed more crucial than others. But to gauge the impact of the center on employees, other IT personnel should also contribute to draw a clear picture of how different employees use data and other resources.

Surprisingly, the biggest challenge of marketing a data center to employees isn’t determining what the data center does or how it affects employees; it’s devising a way to explain it so that all employees can understand and appreciate it.

Language Barriers

As EMC’s director of hosting operations, Paul Brassil runs a data center that EMC uses to show both customers and internal employees the different technologies and challenges inherent in data centers. To Brassil, successfully relaying the value of the data center depends on his ability to avoid techno-babble when explaining the bits and bytes.

“The idea of storage or networking can be very daunting concepts at an enterprise level,” Brassil says. “It’s important that the person communicating out to the business can translate the terms to say, ‘You have a PC on your desk. It’s very much like a storage device,’ and I’ll explain why it is, so they can make a correlation in their mind to what’s going on in the data center.”

“A lot of people who are nontechnical could lose all conception of what the data center is all about,” Brassil adds. “It’s about being able to translate technology into business because the lion’s share of people who benefit from data centers are not technical people.”

Although EMC employees can view the data center in person, the company also uses a monthly internal newsletter called EMC Now to keep employees updated on data center happenings. For example, the newsletter might include an article that describes the company’s extranet and how it’s not a single box but multiple computers that allow N+1 availability. In this way, employees can learn to appreciate the challenges involved in providing that round-the-clock access.

“Employees need to understand all of the dimensions of the data center,” Brassil explains. “For an end user who is dealing with a specific problem, they may not be aware of everything else going on. For instance, say I lose Internet connectivity today. I may just be upset because I cannot do my job, and I call up my help desk and ask, ‘Why is this happening?’”

And it is here where the marketing concept can expand to reach and satisfy other areas. Education will inform employees how and why the data center operates, but toss awareness in the mix, and you will have employees who aren’t quick to lash out at data center personnel. Like major ISPs who use voice messaging to inform subscribers of current problems when they call, EMC uses similar messages on its help desk line so that callers don’t waste their time or technicians’ time with redundant questions.

Says Brassil: “At the end of the day, if the data center is always working perfectly, the end audience doesn’t really need to know that much about it. The critical juncture is when you have an outage or problem. That’s when the audience really needs to understand what a data center is. Being proactive in educating them will better prepare them if in fact you do have a problem.”

The Right Choice

In smaller companies the person best equipped to handle data center marketing is usually the person who oversees it, but according to Brassil, it’s best that this person understands both the technical and business sides of the company. “It comes back to finances. The job of IT is to make sure they’re running a financially sound organization. The business needs to make sure they’re spending the money on the right solutions. Otherwise the data center has no value. If you really don’t have that connection, companies are going to suffer.”

by Christian Perry

In-House Data Center Marketing 101

Marketing a data center to employees who aren’t likely to understandor even care aboutcomplex technical concepts can be an intimidating proposition. But there are steps you can take to streamline the process and make it worthwhile.

• Chart the purpose and uses of your data center. Include all technologies it uses, even if only one employee uses it.
• Talk with IT personnel to determine how the data center affects each employee, from executives to low-level workers.
• Use varied communication methods to educate and alert employees about the data center. Print, email, Web, and phone can all be effective tools in this area. In-person demonstrations can also be useful, but don’t let them compromise regular security.
• Choose a data center spokesperson who understands both the technical and business ends of company practices.
• Use terminology that nontechnical employees can understand. Work with technologies and concepts they’re familiar with to illustrate complex issues.