it means many things to many different people. It starts with what keeps you up at night.

It usually means capex,,$$$$$ , it hopefully means all in, and it should be simple, and secure.     simple? Sometimes, but most times not..
My colleague and friend   Julius Neudorfer  of  “Data Center Knowledge”   has just completed a 5 part journey describing and detailing all DCIM is and can be, and why.
In 2014 there were approximately 75 vendors, consisting of both small startups and major well-entrenched players. Since DCIM as a category originally burst on the scene over six years ago, Gartner’s Hype Cycle seems to have perfectly depicted the way DCIM has been perceived by potential buyers. Starting with the “Initial Peak of Inflated Expectations,” followed by the depressing “Trough of Disillusionment,” and then moving upward on the “Slope of Enlightenment.” DCIM vendor offerings may finally be entering the last stage of the cycle: the “Plateau of Productivity.”
                                                                                       Have we reached the plateau?
Yes there are large organizations and orchestrations to sign and sing with.
Who will run it? Mange it? Monitor it? Who will monitor the monitoring? And while you are monitoring the monitoring; which everyone from Facilities to IT will agree, there is too much information TMI.. “I just shut those alarms off, it’s always emailing me”.
                                                                                                   That’s the real world.
And while this is going on, did anyone notice the pipe burst? Or the power supply overheating, , or that Frank does not have authority to be in that Rack!

                               Did you know that 50% of all server errors are human error? Stupid stuff .
                                                              Confirmed and reconfirmed, its human error, that harms servers.

Why not begin by simply trying to mitigate that, and why not make it easy and affordable.     for everyone? Why not offer only critical alerting for the equipment for the area of the room.          Yes monitor continually, the server room itself, the equipment, and the best- have it all controlled from your phone.

At DCD Internet in San Fransisco the keynote topics were Open Source, Open API  and my favorite keynote : the future of IoT , 

The growing mobile market, and how much more do you use your phone today, then even 5 years ago? How much in 5 years?

I can hardly contain myself as I sit in the audience, the closing discussion “servers     will be on our phones”, well it’s already here.

                            Introducing Kentix, New Innovative Security. Monitoring for IT Pros. One Box Solution.

Multi-Sensor technology is our new one box approach. We put in the sensors, the logging and the alerting all in , one multi-sensor box. We deploy in rack or area above servers, below raised floors, in the nook and crannies of overstuffed server racks, simply monitoring the environment, the access the area keep our devices secure. And only alert or alarm on critical.

Why ? because it’s simple, it can be easily deployed ; and it is extremely cost effective,         The best.. it’s all to your phone, your mobile the device.

And the future is now.

Foundation one DCIM, a Multi-Sensor Lan the covers 300 sq. feet of every consideration:
  All In:      Temp humidity dew point, pre-smoke, CO2, Fire, Motion, Vibration, sabotage, access ..
Continuously monitoring and logging. Only what you determine is an alert, or alarm; comes to you, or your colleague Sam. No software required…..? ..None. Set it up, download phone app, and know what is happening to the servers in your closet,

from your phone.

Want more protection? Add an IP camera; dust the one of you already own. Add a keypad, or complete access with intercom and camera, and control who gets in, See who is there, all simply from your mobile device.

All those small to medium size businesses that have 6 or 12 or 16 racks, and nothing more, all their business processes contained herewith. Can be easily protected by Kentix.            The easiest way to deploy continuous server and equipment protection, and  – beginning at $1600.00.

Need to go beyond? Add multi sensors, place them over racks under raised floors, log and graph the climate to see effective cooling systems are running over time.

The Multi-Sensor RACK –made for your server rack; complete one box- Environmental and Power Monitoring and           Logging at the rack level.

Know your consumption at the server rack. Critically alert on power and voltage fluctuations,
Log continuously the power in your server rack and utilize the data to be more energy efficient.

As you add coverage, the Alarm Manager takes over and creates a Zigbee wireless mesh that continuously watches and checks “are you okay?, are you okay” to all the multi-sensors out there. It is the ONLY way to access the system, all devices are subnet under it. Yes Zigbee wireless mesh, not Bob’s wireless or G wave or any nonstandard. Zigbee is ANSI 802.15-4 for encryption, with additional on top.

How much coverage? With repeaters 10,000 feet easily, and beyond … how much coverage would you like? It all reports one single pain of glass, and to your phone or tablet . 

Monitoring is not just for large organizations. Small to medium businesses, lawyer firms, private bankers, and retail stores; today, every business requires and is dependent on IT system reliability.
Have you already purchased monitoring software? Great, add Kentix as the ‘super lego block” that will log, monitor, and inform your existing platform.

Is there something you monitor in your network that, you would like to know on your mobile? The Alarm Manger is 2 way, it can report to your network, and to you.  

And what if your network goes down?? Will you get the email?
Yes – Know even when your network is down. . Kentix Alarm Manager accepts a SIM card so that it can text you and let you know, when your network is down, because you will never see that email.

Again, how valuable is it to know always, as often as you check your text messages, to know your world of servers is just fine.

And what of the 75 DCIM vendors? Kentix can integrate to them easily, we are Open API, we encourage integration; but only if “they” allow it. After all, the Kentix system is vendor agnostic, we love them all.

So in summation, As Julius has said:
When evaluating DCIM’s potential cost justifications, start by considering your organization’s culture and its strategic vision for computing, not just the physical data center. The maximum benefits of a DCIM investment will be only realized by what your own organization does with the information it can provide, and which management domains will own, operate, and derive from the DCIM system. In the end, DCIM’s long-term value and cost justification will be decided by the degree of convergence among stakeholders and their agendas and politics. This is particularly true in today’s paradigm shift to divest the organization of the traditional facility-centric enterprise IT architecture, as the move to colocation, cloud, and other hosted services gain momentum. Therefore, managing and optimizing diverse computing resources may represent the greatest opportunity for economic justification of DCIM.

And simple Ingenious Kentix is the greatest opportunity to know from your cell that your actually equipment the servers that run your business processes are safe and secure the simple stupid stuff, and where ever they may be.