Outsourcing goes beyond data
Companies specialising in data hosting are better able to employ specialised staff as they are able to offer more exciting career opportunities. For small companies it is often not economically viable to employ expert IT staff on a fulltime basis.
Beside the difficulty of employing highly skilled IT professionals, companies can benefit from economies of scale. Some of the major data hosting companies operate sophisticated network operation centres which will monitor and control all aspects of the network, not just the hosting boxes but also the network that connects to the data storage facilities. Other benefits include high physical security and protection, should power outages occur.
There are various opportunities in the outsourcing market from total IT outsourcing to the outsourcing of specific functions. Data protection is one of the areas often handed to the experts.
According to a 2007 IDC research report, by 2010 organisations will be responsible for the security, privacy, reliability and compliance of at least 85% of digital information stored in the world. With amounts of digital information expected to grow sixfold annually from 2006 to 2010, scalability is essential to the business continuity of companies not wanting to outgrow their data protection solutions.
In this environment the value of handing over the data protection to a specialised service provider is clear, but the importance and sensitivity of most companies’ information makes them unwilling to completely relinquish control over data. This is where co-hosting – or collocation – becomes an attractive option.
A collocation centre is a data centre that hosts the network, server and storage equipment of multiple customers, and connects them to a network service provider. By sharing data centre facilities, customers can access a backup infrastructure of a quality, scale and size that few can justify as an in-house investment.
"Businesses that co-locate see a number of benefits", says Stefano Mattiello, executive head of enterprise sales at Neotel. "First of these is a reduction in time to market, which is enabled by the existing infrastructure. Not needing to build an internal data centre also allows the customer to improve profitability by ensuring that costs are off the balance sheet. Finally, when partnered with a true utility-based bandwidth model, customers are able to benefit from better service value".
Neotel’s NeoHost Co-location is said to offer true bandwidth scalability that allows businesses to cope with peaks in usage. Customers can choose between 1 Mbps, 2 Mbps, 5 Mbps or 10 Mbps of burstable bandwidth, allowing them to cater for unplanned demand and to benefit from a scalable tariff plan. The ability to rapidly upscale the hosted infrastructure also allows customers to pursue vital market opportunities and to fit into any business model.
Neotel provides the local and global bandwidth performance demanded by high-end content providers and the physical and network security required by financial institutions. As the discipline of data protection becomes increasingly formidable, companies will look to co-locate with trusted partners. Without the continuity and seamless upgrades guaranteed by an established service provider, true growth will be inhibited.
EngineerIT
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