Year 2016 was already quickly treading the path towards its end. It was already November, and the indexes pointed at the worst result of a 12-year-long history of full growth and success.
There was well-defined strategic planning, goals to be achieved, but, at that moment, the only goal was to survive the chaos that had shown up in the market.
In the last 3 years, Brazil’s GDP was getting retracted and – to make investors’ uncertainties worse – the country went through a painful impeachment process, and new investigations appeared week after week on corruption scheme investigations involving politicians and companies providing service to state-owned organizations.
The result of all such uncertainties was shown by projects’ shrinking. The private sector simply froze up any and all investments not connected to basic needs; the public sector, by its turn, virtually came to a stop because of so many irregularities found.
For a company that has always made its living on projects and works, what to do in this situation? It is known that – when you are losing the game – there are only two possibilities: giving up or fighting until the end, and the choice was made of the second one.
QUICK ANSWERS
There is suddenly a phone call and the indication of a prospect – an international bank – bringing new excitement to the team. A meeting was called for the following day; the customer was really in a hurry because they had gone through a big electrical problem in their Data Center, and they need quick answers and an Infrastructure Assessment was the best solution to that case.
The customer acted fast and charged the same speed for inspection and result presentation; a new logo had been conquered. But what was about to come was that what dictated the change of a whole services portfolio, and the question was direct: – Do you perform maintenance? In the blink of an eye, the answer came up as fast as the question: – No, but we can perform the management!
The answer given in a confident way reminded us of the data Center Management services that had been discussed in the strategic planning designed a few months before and the sales pattern of such services had already been prepared, the only missing piece in this puzzle was the customer.
A doubt was still uncleared in that meeting: after all, what would be the difference between maintenance and management? The answer came from who had already been managing Data Centers for the past 20 years and had the customer’s experience hiring maintenance companies, and it was very simple.
The customer hires maintenance services for the price rather than for the value, and, because of such, services have become increasingly simpler, with less experienced professionals. By the end of a visit by a technician, the customer receives a handwritten report with punctual information on that visit and cannot envisage the real situation of their environment, mainly when it comes to suppliers serving each of their equipment items: generators, UPS, air-conditioning, safety systems, and automation.
Jack Welch in his book Winning says that "success is directly linked to choosing how to compete in the job market, As it isn't possible choosing everything, regardless of the business size or the amounts to be invested."
Risks and opportunities
Infrastructure Management is in turn directly connected to thorough concern about the environment – from the definition of the preventative maintenance policies, through preparation of an annual interventions plan, and technical knowledge for questioning the performers to each maintenance task, and through to follow-up with a specialist professional who – when receiving a handwritten report – shall translate that into the customer’s reality, spotting risks and opportunities upon issuance of each monthly report.
After all explanation has been duly given, the mission was to set the price and present a proposal in accordance with the presented needs. One more phase has been accomplished and the puzzle had then been completed. A new service range has just come to life.
A few days later still in November, an 18-month-long sales process was finished with one more victory. Another pioneering service had been hired, this time by one of the largest Data Centers in the country. The challenge was to redesign the entire Data Center Asset entry and exit process and register the more than 20,000 current IT assets with RFid technology..
THE TURNING-POINT IN DATA CENTER MANAGEMENT
Ready. The game had been turned; 2016 turned out to be just a year of discoveries for the company relying on professionals having decade-long experience with large Data Centers management and thorough notion on the criticality involved in this type of environment.
Taking advantage of the success achieved in the previous year, IES then launches the Data Center Care, a care platform to your Data Center addressing the physical infrastructure in a holistic way and ensuring a management layer in various modalities, bringing the executives from small and large Data Centers the possibility to clearly see what the next step is to their investment – whether for environment improvement, expansion, innovation or even maintenance.
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