Oddly...
Around our neck of the woods Comms and Server space seems to be absolutely sacrosanct and appears on the building schematics marked as simply VOID.
"Charles, we really need to find extra space to take advantage of this inward investment in our core business, and we can't help but notice that you have just six 45U racks taking up 70 square metres of the floor space, with 250,000BTU reserved on the building's air con, dual 100Amp supplies that account for 10% of the building's electrical design load, and you have just two 9U Catalyst chassis and 400 data points in that comms room..."
"Bob, we NEED that space for possible future expansion"
"You mean that space that's been there for 20 years already, hasn't ever been used, and in fact has grown emptier and emptier as a result of improvements in device miniaturisation, more compact form factors and the lower costs of fibre optics? And where advances in power efficiency now means that the air con has lowered the room temperature to the point where you can hang a side of beef in it for 4 months without breaching food safety regs?"
"Erm... Yeah. That space. Future-proof. Look, it'd be really expensive to recreate that kind of environment if we ever needed it at some point."
"How much does a bag of topsoil, plaster dust and a 100cwt of snipped off bits of twisted pair and LSZH PVC sheath cost?"
"It's very simple. No. IT space."
"Charles... your department has dodged the bullet far too long on your very poor space utilisation figures."
"I wonder if you could utilise two weeks of space in my holiday let in the Algarve?"
"Mmm... make it four and we'll knock out half the loos instead and cut-back the core business growth."
"Sounds like a deal. See you at next year's Space Planning meeting."
Biting the hand that feeds IT
