More than you realize, if you read The Clipper Group's recent report on controlling data center TCO. In this report (available for free download here), Clipper Analyst David Reine suggests that just as you or I wouldn't put all of our life savings into a single investment, effectively putting our entire future security in one basket, CIOs and IT managers shouldn't put all of their IT eggs in one basket. In this case he's talking about finding the right balance between simplification and optimization in order to achieve a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) for your data center.
We've all heard what he's talking about: "Server sprawl, not just throughout the data center, but also through the entire enterprise, combined with an unparalleled surge in data growth, have contributed to a significant increase in the complexity of what tends to be largely inefficient I.T. environments." We've talked about this before on this blog, others have talked about it.
Go to www.dell.com/research to read the full report or to peruse a wide range of research papers, industry analyst reports and other information that might be helpful to you.