Short term, you just need to start saying no, or if not no, ensure they have a solid business case for their server request, ask them why they really need one, and make sure they have a really good case. This will work for a while, but you run the risk of giving the business a bad message about IT

Longer term, I think something like SOA is the answer. Start looking at your application landscape and see if you can simplify it, into a more SOA environment. A smaller number strategic building blocks, that can flex up or down with the business, and can service all the needs of the business.

My organization supports over 1000 AIX operating system instances, close to another 5000 other UNIX-type OS instances, and over 15000 Wintel instances.

We have hardware virtualization throughout and are starting to roll in application virtualization.

This hasn’t saved us any time in software/OS management, except that from a hardware perspective, it’s easier to deploy a new logical partition. The main reason our clients like virtualization is for the hardware cost. “Sprawl” doesn’t go away when you consider the OS and app instances — just the hardware instances (but in many cases, formerly routine tasks like a firmware update on a Series P box are now more complex with the multiple OS images on the same hardware).

I’m not as bullish on automation tools are Phil is, unless you constrict them to a homogenous OS (particularly where IBM is concerned). What works great on Linux/Sun, etc. doesn’t work well with HPUX, AIX, etc. [If the product documentation says "UNIX", I'm automatically turned off. It needs to explicitly say "AIX" for me to even consider it to be a viable option for managing AIX environments.] Of course, it’s people who buy generic *IX management products who keep me employed, because someone’s got to make it work with AIX…

In most organization the discussion that never takes place is the discussion of
how the software is going to be maintained, especially in the long run. If that is
never a consideration you will always see server sprawl, because it is easier to
treat it as a standalone artifact.

Or phrased a little bit differently, if you don’t make a development group think
about the bigger picture they will treat their own requirements for resources the only requirements in existence and thus you as the manager would enable them
and send them down the road of server sprawl.

Automation alone will never keep pace with demand (especially if it makes resources more disposable). Accountability alone will never realize the full potential of the solution.

BTW: This is probably old hat for CIO/MBA business types, but some looking into economics a while back really opened the eyes of this computer geek on how some of the thinking of the generations can be applied to what we do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

In my experience, the problem normally results from not having enough good infrastructure resources (people) close enough to your end users (those requesting the servers).

If those end users are of the less technical type, they’re not going to understand their needs that well, and may not know where to turn to get the proper talent allocated to their need so that their need can be properly defined – the also often love and appreciate help of this nature when it is made available to them. Doing so can help keep your server count down.

If those end users are of the more technical type, often they’re programmers or some such that while they are solid technical people, don’t always have the needed infrastructure skills to properly define their need. If they do have the skills, it’s almost a certainty that they don’t have the needed visibility into other projects to see how they can be more efficient: “Our design change is going to require a database, and we need a server to host it on.” – “There’s a better way, team X over here already has a DB server that’s not being fully utilized – we can host your DB on that server.”

In addition, if any of these people have their needs neglected or ignored long enough, they have an tendency to start hording resources whenever possible – kind of like squirrels storing nuts for winter. This isn’t efficient, but if their needs aren’t being met, they may not care about your needs (efficiency).

Then there always seem to be a few people somewhere who just don’t properly track the resources they have been allocated or their use of them. Infrastructure people close to the problem can spot it, point it out, and push back to help these individuals clean up and organize their space a little better – resulting in better efficiency

All in all though, it still comes down to having good talented people on the ground close to the problem. At least that’s been my experience across the isle from you.