Today there is increasing pressure on IT organizations to improve service levels, increase availability and reduce costs. One way organizations look to meet these challenges is through better manageability of their IT environment. Today's enterprise data center is the single most concentrated, complex and strategic component of the IT environment, and are greatly aided by any initiative aimed at reducing complexity and increasing manageability - data center consolidation.

There are many methods available when considering data center consolidation. The three most common methods used for data center consolidation are physical consolidation, logical consolidation and rationalization.

Planning and execution of the data center consolidation has immense implications on the availability/disruption and the level of IT services delivered. In addition, the ability to effectively plan for a data center consolidation directly impacts the IT organization's ability to perform the implementation on time and on budget. These challenges require a robust platform to effectively manage all related processes, auditing and reporting of the consolidation effort.