Calculating ROI of Monitoring and Maintenance Service Contracts for New Data Centers

Overview

The benefits modeled are reduced downtime, lower MTTR, avoided energy penalty from degrading equipment, and lower staff and truck-roll costs. The core contract functions are 24x7 remote monitoring, predictive maintenance and automated dispatch with parts. The energy penalty is given concretely, derived from an Oak Ridge study: unmaintained equipment uses about 119% of baseline energy in year 2, 129% in year 3, 139% in year 4 and 151% in year 5. An average truck roll costs about $1,000 per dispatch.

A cited survey reports about 80% of sites without DCIM had a major outage against about 29% with DCIM, with MTTR reduction up to about 90%. In the sensitivity cases ROI ranges from 11% to 180% for downtime costs of $350/min to $700/min. The 11% case marks the cheap-downtime end and the 180% case the expensive end, a roughly 16-fold spread in return driven only by the downtime-cost input.

The conclusion is that the return depends mostly on the cost of downtime: modest where outages are cheap, very high where they are expensive. The survey data are a cited source, not the paper's own measurement. The 119% to 151% energy penalty is derived from an Oak Ridge study rather than measured by the paper, and the survey figures are likewise cited, so only the downtime-cost input is specific to each site.

Key points

1. Energy penalty for unmaintained equipment: about 119% of baseline in year 2, 129% year 3, 139% year 4, 151% year 5.
2. Average truck roll costs about $1,000 per dispatch.
3. Example ROI ranges from 11% to 180% for downtime costs of $350/min to $700/min.
4. Cited survey: about 80% of sites without DCIM had a major outage versus about 29% with DCIM; MTTR reduction up to about 90%.
5. Core contract functions: 24x7 remote monitoring, predictive maintenance, automated dispatch with parts.

Using it in design

• Add an efficiency-degradation factor to the opex model for run-to-fail operation (+19%/+29%/+39%/+51% cooling energy in years 2 to 5) against the maintained case.
• Let users enter downtime cost per minute to compute service-contract ROI.
• Add a 'monitoring present' flag to the availability model that lowers MTTR.

Who should read it

Operations and finance decision makers building the case for a monitoring and maintenance contract.

Related standards

• EN 50600-3-1

Publication details

Authors

Patrick Donovan; Wendy Torell

Publisher

Schneider Electric

Year

2024

Document number

WP 152

Document language

English

Source type

Manufacturer

Access

Free to read

Licence

Copyright retained; citation only — the publisher’s terms apply to the original document

Citation