Why data center infrastructure management is evolving, and how UIIM represents the future.
For nearly two decades, DCIM has played an important role in helping data center operators gain visibility into their infrastructure. DCIM was a major step forward for its time, but it was not designed for the demands of AI workloads, higher power densities and distributed architecture. DCIM was also never designed for the intense pressures that data center teams face today to scale operations, accelerate service delivery and meet evolving sustainability and compliance requirements.
Organizations require a new approach to data center management. But what comes after DCIM?
In this two-part Q&A, RiT Tech CEO Assaf Skolnik discusses how Universal Intelligent Infrastructure Management (UIIM) is the future of infrastructure management.
When people talk about DCIM’s limitations, the discussion typically focuses on how it struggles with the technical needs of data centers. But the issue goes deeper than that, doesn’t it?
Assaf: Yes definitely. DCIM is a product of its time, and it was a time when organizations viewed their data centers primarily as a technical environment. That may have made sense then, but today data centers are one of the most critical assets of a modern business. These major investments must deliver positive business outcomes that move the business forward.
Organizations must approach infrastructure management with the same strategic discipline they apply to ERP and CRM. Data centers need to be planned, designed, implemented, and continuously managed as a strategic business asset. To do that, organizations need a single, unified management framework for the entire infrastructure ecosystem. That is what Universal Intelligent Infrastructure Management (UIIM) provides. It gives organizations far more control over IT systems, networking, power, cooling, facilities, environmental systems, and business processes, giving organizations a truly unified framework for managing their infrastructure.
Is DCIM capable of providing that unified management framework?
Assaf: The limitations of DCIM can’t be overcome by adding features or bolting on additional applications. When organizations attempt to manage modern digital infrastructure with an outdated DCIM foundation, they face escalating risks, costs and inefficiencies. What we need is to move beyond DCIM to an approach that brings together infrastructure data, operational workflows, automation, and intelligence in a vendor-neutral platform that works across existing technologies and systems.
That is what Universal Intelligent Infrastructure Management (UIIM) makes possible. UIIM is a new approach to infrastructure management designed to address industry needs and challenges that traditional DCIM was not designed to solve. The concept and framework for UIIM was pioneered by RiT Tech and developed through collaboration with data center experts, industry analysts, data center operators, colocation companies, enterprise I&O experts and other industry stakeholders.
UIIM enables data center operators to manage infrastructure as a unified environment rather than as a collection of disconnected tools. It enables organizations to coordinate operations across systems, automate workflows, and make decisions based on the relationship between infrastructure resources and the services they support. It is also a shift toward infrastructure that can understand its own condition, anticipate requirements, coordinate actions, and continuously improve the way it supports the business.
Let’s talk more about the specific challenges that data center teams are facing as computing systems evolve. Rising power density is one of those big issues. How does UIIM go beyond traditional DCIM to help organizations effectively manage higher-density environments?
Assaf: The power density of AI workloads and other advanced computing systems is putting intense pressure on data center teams to make the best use of the capacity they already have. One of the ways that organizations can accomplish that is by identifying stranded capacity in power, cooling, space, or other infrastructure resources. This capacity is available but cannot be effectively utilized because of constraints elsewhere in the environment. Traditional DCIM can see into individual infrastructure components, but identifying and resolving these mismatches requires a broader understanding of the relationships between them.
This is an area where UIIM can deliver immediate operational value. By viewing the entire IT ecosystem through one management framework, UIIM helps operators identify stranded capacity as well as understand the dependencies that prevent it from being used. This enables better capacity allocation, more effective infrastructure utilization, and more informed decisions about where additional investment is truly required.
Grid reliability is increasingly a challenge for data center operators. What new demands is this placing on data center management and how does UIIM help companies navigate this complexity?
Assaf: Power reliability is critically important for data centers, but data center operators face an increasing number of challenges with power delivered from utility feeds. These challenges are driven by factors such as aging infrastructure, skyrocketing capacity demands, and increasing frequency of natural disasters. To mitigate the risks related to grid reliability, data centers are relying on a broader mix of power sources and resilience solutions to maintain uptime. UIIM provides the management and intelligence layer that helps organizations connect those systems and manage their infrastructure as one operational environment.
Traditional DCIM is not capable of giving data center teams the visibility and control that is needed for managing the increasing complexity of power infrastructure. DCIM’s limited monitoring capabilities do not provide the comprehensive view and precise coordination of power infrastructure that includes diversified power sources, backup generators, electrical distribution, UPS systems, batteries, and other energy resources.
UIIM provides the foundation for this enhanced level of coordination by connecting power systems with the wider infrastructure environment. It supports visibility into dependencies, capacity planning, operational workflows, and the actions required when power conditions change, all of which enable more informed decisions and coordinated operations. For example, understanding which workloads and infrastructure resources depend on a particular power path is essential for planning and managing a transition between power sources. Insights like these are critical to ensuring resilience and protecting uptime.
Let’s talk about changing pressures on data center teams from the boardroom. In the past, data center teams were judged on metrics like uptime, performance and efficiency. But organizations are increasingly expecting their investments in data centers to deliver business outcomes. How are these success metrics evolving and how does UIIM help teams with this set of expectations?
Assaf: Yes, the definition of success in a data center is definitely expanding. Uptime, performance, and efficiency remain fundamental expectations. But data center teams are also being asked to demonstrate how their infrastructure investments contribute to business continuity, growth, cost management, and sustainability.
UIIM gives organizations the insights they need to ensure that digital infrastructure is aligned with the business strategy, supporting its growth, and delivering the required value. Traditional DCIM can’t answer those questions because of its siloed view of individual elements. In contrast, UIIM enables organizations to view and manage infrastructure as a unified whole that encompasses IT, facilities, networking, power systems, environmental systems and business applications. UIIM also empowers organizations to manage the data center in ways that optimize not only for efficiency but for achieving business outcomes. This is the foundation that allows you to manage infrastructure as a strategic business asset — one that can be measured, optimized, and aligned continuously with the needs of the business.
In Part 2 of the Q&A with Assaf, we will discuss how UIIM helps organizations address challenges like the growing skills shortage, AI-driven data center operations, evolving compliance requirements and more.
