HOW DOES UIIM
DIFFER FROM DCIM?

1. DCIM has historically focused mainly on the facility side of data center operations in effect being little more than a specialist building management system (BMS).
   
   Some have admittedly focused on the IT equipment within a data center but rarely if ever have tools had capabilities in both areas.
   
   UIIM is designed to provide a framework for a multi-faceted view of all the activity that is taking place in the data center facility including the basic space, power and cooling resources but far more as it integrates with the IT equipment and networks assets down to individual ports and cables. On top of this, there is the requirement to manage the human resources available more efficiently as well as contact with customers. This can be achieved by integration with a broad set of systems and workflow management tools beyond the scope of traditional DCIM (like BMS, CMDB, ITSM CRM or BPM - Business Process Management tools) to improve ROI in relation to data center services.
   
   This multifaceted and multi-layered approach provides more than just the I&O leaders with the data needed to make coherent financial and efficiency decisions across all facilities.
   
   
   
2. DCIM provides real-team data on metrics to help optimise capacity utilisation and energy consumption.
   
   UIIM suggests a unified data store to include, beyond the traditionally connected data, information relating to IT assets and connectivity, software services and interdependency between all of the above. It also implies vendor agnostic and broad coverage of integration with a variety of hardware and software systems – to further expand access to multiple data sets.
   
   UIIM then offers the ability to analyse the federated data and to apply predicted insights to improve overall resource management and consumption as well as producing standardised key-performance-indicators (KPI) for data center operation.
   
   
   
3. DCIM provides a real-time view of the data center operations today.
   
   Long term, the UIIM practice will guide the establishment of a platform with actionable insights for data center management, leveraged with prescriptive recommendations and proactive automations to improve decision making and optimize operation. With multi-layer and multi-faceted software systems, it will help to identify trends, automate workflows, optimise resource utilization and predict demands for space, power and cooling.