How CDW’s CARA Assessment Helps IT Managers Optimize an Infrastructure Refresh

Unpacking my recent conversations with IT managers, directors and leaders, I can safely say that capacity planning has become a real concern. Let me elaborate.

It’s not necessarily that every organization is running large-scale AI workloads today, but the ripple effect is there.

Some customers are starting to introduce AI-driven applications that demand more compute, memory and storage. Others are grappling with AI tools that generate new data rapidly, thereby increasing storage demands.

What this means from a business standpoint is that infrastructure is aging out faster. Servers, cooling equipment, appliances, etc., that might have been viable for longer now need to be refreshed sooner just to keep up with evolving workload requirements.

At the same time, the cost side of the equation isn’t what it used to be. We’ve seen situations where hardware that was quoted six months ago is now two, three or even four times more expensive.

So, now IT teams are in a tough spot. They know they need to expand or replace capacity, but the financial impact has changed significantly. Budgets that once covered a straightforward refresh may no longer be enough and that forces difficult decisions.

Many IT managers are thinking of delaying new projects, reducing scope or moving forward without full confidence.

The third challenge, the one that tends to sit underneath the other two, is visibility. Over time, virtual environments evolve. IT teams tend to provision VMs with extra capacity for just-in-case scenarios or allocate storage conservatively. The concerning part is that those decisions aren’t always revisited.

What we consistently find is that there’s often unused or underutilized capacity already in the environment. It can exist in the form of oversized VMs or storage efficiencies that haven’t been reclaimed yet. But without clear data, it’s hard to see that.

With CARA, our goal is to help IT leaders gain targeted insights into their current infrastructure and use those to plan their upgrades in an optimized way.

We help you take a measured, data-driven look at your environment so you can make decisions with confidence. In many cases, that means identifying opportunities to right-size what you already have before committing to new spend.

We start by gathering data about your environment over a defined period. That gives us a realistic snapshot of how your workloads are performing day to day.

From there, we take that data and run it through a structured analysis. We’re looking at things like compute utilization, memory consumption, storage performance and how resources are being allocated across clusters, hosts and virtual machines.

The important thing to understand is that this isn’t about making changes right away. We’re not going in and tuning your environment on the fly. What we’re doing is building a clear picture so when you do make a decision, it’s based on evidence rather than assumption.

At the end of the assessment, your team walks away with a set of insights that are both practical and actionable.

• Right-sizing recommendations: A clear view of what your environment should look like based on actual usage, helping you avoid over-provisioning and unnecessary spending.
• Performance and utilization benchmarks: Insight into how your current environment measures across compute, memory and storage, aligned to best practices.
• Storage and capacity insights: Visibility into capacity, peak IOPs and throughput, along with opportunities to reclaim or better utilize existing resources.
• OS and capacity forecasting: Concise, actionable summaries that translate findings into informed decisions for ongoing scalability and performance.

It gives your team a starting point for more informed discussions, whether that’s optimizing what you have, planning a refresh or even looking at broader modernization strategies.

Once you ingest our insights, my team can help you advance your plans with tailored refresh support and weigh options with leading infrastructure providers.

From where I sit, the following outcomes tend to matter most to IT teams.

Once you understand how resources are actually being used, it becomes a lot easier to right-size workloads and make better use of what’s already in place. In many cases, that alone can delay or even reduce the need for new investment.

Instead of being bogged down by ongoing supply chain disruptions, you’re planning with a focused mindset. You know which hardware needs immediate attention and which can wait. That reduces reactive purchases and allows you to time upgrades with greater price flexibility.

Whether you’re expanding capacity or optimizing existing infrastructure, you’ve got a set of insights you can actually stand behind. That makes conversations with stakeholders more straightforward and decisions a lot easier to justify.

So, while the assessment itself is relatively simple, the outcome is a much more controlled and confident approach to how you manage capacity going forward.

At CDW, my team and the broader organization offer valuable partnerships, expertise and support to evolve with your environment. We can provide the following capabilities for our Canadian customers.

• Find the right technology fit: Our ties with a wide array of technology partners help us find the virtualization solutions that suit your infrastructure plans.
• Support for a wide range of workloads: No matter which hypervisor you use, we offer support for a large portfolio of virtualization capabilities to cover your specific needs and use cases.
• Proven standards across data centre, hybrid and cloud: Designs are aligned to established best practices, giving you consistency whether you’re operating on-prem or extending into hybrid environments.
• Global scale with local support: With broad reach and 90+ solution architects in Canada, CDW can support planning and execution wherever your environment sits.