Are There Real AI-Enhanced DCIM Software Tools You Can Use Today?

Many vendors over the years have muddled analytics and AI together. Will something genuinely intelligent eventually emerge?

Scott Fulton III, Contributor

December 13, 2018

1 Min Read
Panel, mainframe

There’s a clear distinction between data center management software and a data center infrastructure management (DCIM) tool. It gets missed all the time, but it’s there. DCIM deals with the basic allocation of resources required to maintain the functional level of a data center — energy, processor power, storage, bandwidth, cool air. The rest may deal with higher-level activities such as access control and operating system refreshing, all of which at some point pass through the data center, and all of which have at some point been mislabeled “infrastructure.”

There’s also a clear distinction between Artificial Intelligence and automation. This one isn’t just missed by folks in the general press – it’s actively ignored. AI refers to a class of process whose solution, once attained, would appear to a rational person to have required human intelligence to produce. No matter how long or sophisticated a math problem is, the attainment of its solution is not AI. A spreadsheet is capable of predicting the general trend of a heuristic chart. AI is about discerning patterns that ordinary mathematics would miss.

It would seem a simple enough matter for us to find the overlap between DCIM and AI. Is there a place for artificial intelligence in optimizing the everyday processes of managing infrastructure, and are there tools available now that use real AI toward that objective?

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About the Author

Scott Fulton III

Contributor

Scott M. Fulton, III is a 39-year veteran technology journalist, author, analyst, and content strategist, the latter of which means he thought almost too carefully about the order in which those roles should appear. Decisions like these, he’ll tell you, should be data-driven. His work has appeared in The New Stack since 2014, and in various receptacles and bins since the 1980s.

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