Learn how Solihull Council Automates Asset Management to Drive Efficiency and Improve Customer Service

1. Solihull Council Automates Asset Management to
Drive Efficiency and Improve Customer Service
Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council is part of the West Midlands conurbation, 9 miles
from the centre of Birmingham city centre. As part of its continued drive to reduce costs
and provide value for money to its residents, the data centre team at Solihull MBC decided
to further drive efficiency measures and extend the life of its packed data centre by
introducing asset tracking. It worked with AIT to help define and implement a state of the
art DCIM asset management solution.
The new solution allows the data centre operations team to update asset information on a
mobile app while standing in front of the server racks, and provides real time information
as they need it.
The Challenge
Tony Daly, the lead Data Centre Technician at Solihull Council, states what they needed:
I lead the team that look after the data centre. We had a goal to make improvements to
the Data Centre to improve the efficiency and reduce costs. As part of previous initiatives
we had had already installed power metering and improved air flow within the data
centre to monitor and bear down on costs. In order to drive further efficiency savings we
wanted to maximise the use of available resources in the data centre and reduce support
costs by automating asset and cable management in their data centre.
control. connect. communicate
“The AIT team listened to our needs
and recommended a solution to fit
our exact requirements with
minimum costs for the council ”
Tony Daly,
Operations Team Supervisor

2. “The AIT team listened to our needs and recommended a solution to fit our exact
requirements with minimum costs for the council,” said Tony.
The Solution
Asset tracking and network management had been done using spread sheets and
graphics packages. AIT proposed AIT PIMs, a component based DCIM software solution, to
automate this approach.
The key benefits delivered by AIT PIMs were: to increase capacity by making use of all the
rack space in a very cramped data centre, to improve asset management and location
tracking, to manage moves and changes in real time and to speed up fault diagnosis and
fix times.
A key feature of the software is the mobile app which allows users to view and update AIT
PIMs while standing at the rack;
“The mobile app improves our productivity. We now make faster more informed decisions
because we have all the relevant information at our finger tips while standing in front of the
rack. We update asset records and carry out and sign off moves and changes work orders
directly. This saves time and ensures we maintain accurate records,” continued Tony.
The Result
AIT audited the existing asset and network
connectivity spreadsheets before importing them
into the AIT PIMs software. Full training was provided
to the councils data centre team for operational use
with the ongoing support of AITs 24/7 technical
helpdesk.
The data centre operations team can now
immediately locate their servers and assets to
diagnose faults or install upgrades, manage rack
space to minimise stranded capacity and
streamline their work flow when they make moves and changes.
“The asset management system enables us to instantly locate hardware and visualise
connectivity with ease, helping us to reduce fix times when problems occur and maximise
data centre utilisation.” concluded Tony Daly.
control. connect. communicate
AIT Partnership Group Ltd
670 Eskdale Road
Winnersh Triangle
Reading, RG41 5TS
T: 0845 293 2790
E: customer.services@ait-pg.co.uk
W: http://www.ait-pg.co.uk
© Copyright 2014, Rev2, 19/12/14
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