DCIM stands for Data Center Infrastructure Management. DCIM provides enterprise IT teams and administrators with insight into data center performance to ensure everything is healthy and functioning as expected. DCIM was first introduced about a decade ago. As workloads have increased and the amounts of data processed in the data center exploded trying to manage it all manually became unrealistic. DCIM makes data center management smoother and simpler by using software, hardware, and sensors to monitor critical systems from a central dashboard in real-time. Additionally, it extends to managing and monitoring virtual machines within the infrastructure. DCIM systems can also monitor the power, cooling, and energy systems feeding into the data center. DCIM handles not only day-to-day tasks but also the management of change, capacity, and assets.

Importance of DCIM

• Provides great visibility: DCIM software integrates the monitoring of the entire IT infrastructure into a centralized system. Administrators know at a glance how their data center environment is configured, what resources are assigned to which physical or virtual services, and how the resources are being utilized. This is a lot more efficient than trying to figure it all out manually and recording it on spreadsheets.
  
• Reduced risk: DCIM software allows organizations to automate repetitive administrative tasks like data migration and storage reclamation—and reduce the potential for human error, which accounts for up to 70% of all data center outages. 
  
• Disaster prevention: When key resource usage can be tracked, decisions can be made about the future of the data center based on current and estimated power or cooling usage. This can lead to better capabilities to prevent problems within the data center environment. For instance, if the data center maintains a higher-than-recommended temperature, companies would see that data and be able to make an informed decision about cooling systems.
  

• Improve workflow management: A quality DCIM system can optimize workflows by consolidating servers, balancing workloads, and managing equipment’s power usage.
  

To know more about DCIM, please follow this article Data Center Infrastructure Management