Management Structure

Question: I'm looking for best-practice information with regard to the organizational management structure of a large data center (120,000 square feet). Any data describing roles, responsibility, and reporting relationships would be appreciated.

Answer: This can best be answered by understanding the IT products and services that will be provided by the data center. There are several feasible operating models and a few questions should be addressed to give you the practical answer. For example:

• What functional areas and systems will be installed in the data center?
• Will the silos include telephony, mainframe, LINUX, UNIX, Windows, NAS, SAN, networking, security, middleware, and facilities infrastructure, etc?
• Are you following a functional silo model or are you providing products and services in accordance with the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) IT Service Management framework?
• How does the rest of the organization support the data center? Will the data center provide 24-hour or lights-out support?
• What is the data centers relationship to other support areas?

The answers to these questions will provide the basis for your solution.

Greenwich Technology Partners