Data Center Facilities Risk Management

Learn more about Intel IT's approach to data center facilities risk management.

Intel IT Intel’s 54 data center modules located around the globe power Intel’s design, office, manufacturing and enterprise business domains—they are the heartbeat of Intel’s continued innovation. Intel IT has recently improved how we approach data center facilities risk management, using a unique combination of processes, data and visibility:

• We adopted the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) for incident, problem and change management.
• We developed and conducted a global data center “street to server” audit that probed every aspect of every data center.
• We designed a custom dashboard that provides us with a data center heat map of data center incidents.

Using these processes, data and tools enables us to intelligently prioritize data center risk mitigation efforts and focus investments on problems with the most business impact. Over almost four years, we have reduced the overall data center risk score by a little over 50%. Notable results include:

• We have reduced the occurrence and impact/severity of data center mega-events.
• Both incidents and business impacts are trending down.
• We now make better risk decisions about where to direct our resources.

We have also implemented new maintenance practices and updated our documentation. We expect these efforts to create an increasing return on investment as we measure long-term savings on a revolving five-year basis. Going forward, the team will continue rolling out actions derived from this project, including multi-year construction projects.

As a result of reduced risks, our data center environment is more stable, which reduces business impact. The overall number of incidents has declined and the number of incidents with business impact dropped to nearly zero by the end of 2022. Also, our data indicates that our informed risk-taking decisions have grown increasingly accurate. 

We have learned that not investing in our data centers can introduce risk through technical debt. Adoption of the ITIL change, incident and problem management modules— combined with a highly detailed global data center audit over nearly four years and a close working relationship with Corporate Services—has enabled us to lower overall data center risk score by 50%. Key lessons include:

• The ITIL processes gave us the right methodology.
• The street-to-server audit presented us with the necessary data.
• The dashboards and heat map provided us with the necessary visibility.

We can now make data-driven data center investment decisions so we can focus our investments on areas that matter most and that will deliver the best return on investment. We hope that by sharing our best practices, we can help other IT departments take a fresh look at data center risk management.