Data centres – to outsource or not?
Over the past few years broadband has become available at a much reduced cost, and the current roll-out of fibre both nationally and in the metros will lead to further cost reductions. With many of the obstacles out of the way, outsourcing of data and cloud computing are becoming economically more viable.
Nevertheless, when it comes to moving into the cloud, although many companies are comfortable with hosting their email in the public cloud, they still prefer to keep what is referred to as “mission critical” data on their premises.
The increased demand for mobility, with more and more employees bringing their laptops and tablet PCs into the workplace, brings an additional challenge for connectivity and more comprehensive security.
For many companies outsourcing their data centres or collocating in a vendor- neutral data centre becomes highly attractive as operating costs for a small in-house data centre are rapidly increasing.
Since 2009, the cost of power has escalated by between 25 –30% annually, with a good chance that increases could continue until 2014 and beyond. “In smaller data centres, this means it now costs a 100% more to run the facility than it did three years ago because there are no economies of scale,” says Lex van Wyk, MD of Teraco. “Outside these costs, it is also likely that the efficiency of the facility has dropped off.”
Technology moves at lighting speed with constant IT hardware improvements. DC infrastructure is not always upgraded at the same time. “A good example is the high-density of IT equipment which places far higher demands on power and cooling today than it did three years ago,” van Wyk said.
“These changes need to be proactively managed. Aside from the high cost of electricity per kwH, we can add the cost of a less energy-efficient DC infrastructure to the operational expenditure budget.”
Lex van Wyk
Green issues are an additional burden on what van Wyk calls “boutique” data centres. While to be “green” may be a major objective for companies, capex is not always available.
In his opinion, in multi-tenant data centres the energy resource requirements are reduced through the economies of scale gained from centralised and shared services. Companies can still host their own business critical data but with equipment located in a vendor-independent data centre.
Van Wyk believes that there are a number of important questions that should be asked before collocating:
- What differentiates your service provider in a competitive market, and what new offerings and reduced costs are on the horizon? What joint ventures are being evaluated to increase service offerings and value?
- Have they designed the data centre to provide resilience throughout, including power, cooling, fire suppression and cable management?
- Do they offer a good service level agreement and 5/9 availability?
- Are there maintenance regimes in place to ensure continuity, and do they regularly replace old equipment?
- Is there open access with multi-vendor connectivity?
- Do they have sustainable growth plans supplying enough space to cater for their clients’ future needs?
On the issue of when to outsource, he says: “If it is not a core part of your service offering, why own it? Why not outsource it to someone else and focus on the core issues of your business?”
Source: EngineerIT
Vendor-neutral data centres
Over past few years there has been a focus on vendor-neutral data centres and many believe that this is the way forward. A vendor-neutral data centre connects to any network service provider. It outsources services to any IT services business or systems integrator, connects and offers services to any customer with no conflict of interest between client and data centre.
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