Roll out of new DCIM solution

across Sky’s UK data centre estate

Keysource worked closely with Sky to roll out a new DCIM (Data Centre Infrastructure Management) solution across its UK data centre estate. Built from a need to replace aging legacy software platforms with an integrated solution.

About the project

Keysource worked closely with Sky to roll out a new DCIM (Data Centre Infrastructure Management) solution across its UK data centre estate. Built from a need to replace aging legacy software platforms with an integrated solution, StruxureWare for Data Centers DCIM platform was chosen to deliver a range of operational, performance, cost and efficiency benefits across Sky’s business.

Sky operates the most comprehensive multi-channel and multi-platform television services in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Germany and Austria covering 20 million households, and extending from TV to mobile devices, on linear and On Demand. It also offers a range of broadband, telephone and TV services.

Operating data centres throughout the UK, technology is at the heart of ensuring Sky can meet the demands of its business and customers both now and in the future. Sky’s IT estate includes over 1000 server racks located in a combination of Sky owned and operated facilities along with some co-located facilities. The range of challenges the operations team faces include: delivering service availability with the highest levels of performance, improving resource and operational efficiency and lowering costs.

With the existing asset management solution approaching end of life, Riccardo and his data centre operations team sought a new solution which would help Sky understand how it’s servers could be better utilised, whether idle equipment could be safely turned off, and what impact that could have on available capacity throughout the data centre estate, as well as the energy consumption of the system.

Keysource worked with stakeholders from across the business units to ensure complete buy-in from the start. With an aim to not change the way Sky ran their operations but rather to streamline and optimise the process, the solution that was delivered comprised of a mobile friendly, single dashboard that all asset, rack and BMS data can be viewed on a single screen. This has allowed Sky to have full sight of their IT and current capacity, and use this in order to run their estate as efficiently as possible.

1

Avoid unnecessary building

Maximised efficiency of existing data centre estate, avoiding building additional facilities.
2

Centralised holistic monitoring

Enabled centralised holistic monitoring of the whole data centre estate via a single dashboard, saving time.
3

Integrated Change Management

Reduced human error and improved workflow through integrated change management.
4

Long term planning of server hardware

Full visibility of server hardware utilisation correlated with power consumption for long term planning.
5

Business Intelligence

Business intelligence provided through reports showing utilisation, performance and capacity planning.
6

Impact Alerts

Improved service availability and operational performance through impact alerts and mobile apps.
7

Audit Trail

Full audit trail achieved compliance and reduced time.
8

Lower carbon Imprint

Lower carbon footprint achieved via automatic notification of server under-usage.
9

Improvement Suggestions

Engaged users informing them of potential improvements in terms of performance / usage, budget and carbon savings from better provisioned resources.

Although deploying StruxureWare has been a success, DCIM is a never-ending journey, so as well as choosing a tool we knew would work, it was important we chose a partner with whom we were comfortable, and who we could work with for the foreseeable future. For Sky, the choice of Keysource and Schneider Electric was an easy one to make.

Riccardo Degli EffettiHead of Data Centre Operations, Sky