Facilities

In almost every customer briefing that I have (over 70 in the last 4 months), I find one missing piece that can costs these companies 10's of millions of dollars every year. It's the alignment between Facilities and IT. My primary job at Sun is to bridge the gap between the Facilities organization, who manages the real estate portfolio and executes projects in the datacenters (compression, expansion, retrofit), and the IT & Engineering organizations that actual occupy and use the space. I've only found a few companies that actually have a team like mine (GDS). I don't think it is clear to most that not having that role, seriously limits the capabilities of both sides. Facilities is worried about cost to operate the business Real Estate portfolio. This is everything from the type and amount of toliet paper in the bathrooms to the utility bills for these high density cabinets in the datacenters. They are driven by cost reduction and usually don't have the luxury of innovating or driving next generation solutions. IT on the other hand has to constantly deliver performance in the datacenter.