Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) is the soul of Hewlett-Packard’s new set of services, aimed at assisting organizations to improve the efficiency of their data centers, reports Joab Jackson of IDG News Service. DCIM tools monitor data center operations and graphically display a complete inventory of physical and logical assets that can be used to reduce inefficiencies. Historically, different aspects of data centers were managed by different people. Combining the data from these separate entities provides a complete picture of the organization’s spending and points to areas where the money could possibly be saved by reallocating resources. HP’s Converged Management Consulting Services comprises of four parts, which begins with a workshop that brings together the company’s workforce and provides them with insights about relevant technologies and best practices. The HP Converged Management Roadmap Service then analyzes the IT and facilities departments to identify areas that can be reworked for greater efficiency while also providing roadmaps for reorganizing the data center. The final two services, Converged Management Design and Converged Management Implementation provide organizations with a detailed plan of how to architect the data center and help them implement the DCIM design. Besides HP, Nlyte Software and Cisco are also helping organizations adopt DCIM. According to analysts from International Data Corporation (IDC), DCIM would be a growing practice among data centers in 2014.