A just-released Wikibon study finds that intelligent rack technology, and specifically the version supplied by Hewlett-Packard, provides compelling business value to the point that all medium-to-large enterprises should convert to the technology.

In a recent alert titled “The Business Case for Intelligent Racks”, Wikibon CTO David Floyer says that several leading vendors have versions of intelligent racks. However, only the HP version identifies physical assets in a simple way and provides a framework for improved asset management, power management, equipment management and utilization, and software management. As a result in a typical enterprise with $1 million in revenues and an IT budget of $30,000, and 40 racks in its data center, upgrading to intelligent racks over four years would cost $85,000 per year and provide annual benefits of about $300,000. This assumes that the existing racks would be replaced with converged infrastructure that could take advantage of the intelligent racks. However, only 10% of the data center equipment needs to take advantage of the intelligent racks to cost-justify them.

As a result, Floyer recommends that all data center hardware vendors add compatibility with the HP intelligent racks and make them a de facto industry standard, and that CIOs and CTOs replace their existing racks with HP intelligent racks as they reach replacement age.