As data center operations managers and business owners analyze their budgets to uncover economic headwinds, the importance of deriving ROI from each purchase and initiative is considered.
To better understand the costs and benefits of the Cisco Secure Data Center Solution, we engaged with analyst firm Forrester to interview and study one of our customer's data center security implementation. Here are five areas of ROI that were uncovered in this study:

?20% reduction in security threats-
The customer noted the reduction in port scanning attacks, denial of service attacks, SQL inception attacks and others. The security team can now spend much more time keeping business systems at optimal performance levels versus reacting to security issues post incident.

?25% less time spent mitigating each issue-
With automated firewall rules sets, the security team now spends far less time reacting to individual issues and manually updating policies.

?50% reduction in help desk calls-
A smooth implementation allowed the customer to install additional security without impacting end users.

?25% in hardware cost savings-
With the ability to cluster multiple modules on a single hardware blade, the customers expects to avoid having to make additional hardware purchases for up to three years. Additional savings stem from having a highly efficient datacenter footprint that will be realized in terms of energy and backspace savings.

?Upgrading tasks 50% faster-
Built in security means that the network topology does not have to be retrofitted to accommodate security. The customer can now complete installation, expansion and upgrade tasks 50% faster, meaning that IT security teams can concentrate on more strategic functions instead.

Many times as InfoSec professionals, it can be difficult to associate security investments with ROI, but in today's world the savvy professional will see that by doing so, it will help to gain funding for other parts of the business you have been dying to invest in.

We've created an infographic that illustrates these issues that datacenters face today and how a comprehensive security system can help: Additionally, for more news and discussions, head over to @SecDatacenter or Secure Data Center Trends