Building a Datacenter vs. Outsourcing a Data Center

Compared to earlier times, the number of data centers today is significantly higher. This is due to the shift from a paper-based economy to digital based one. Hence, the modern enterprises run on digital data and it is datacenters, which house thousands of servers, that operate day in and day out to power applications, disseminate information, and automate different processes. This leads to increased power consumption, increased operating costs and increased emission of greenhouse gases. When data center carbon footprint started to grow at an alarming rate to become a global concern, the different governments all over the world decided to act tough by imposing regulations and directives on enterprises. This forced enterprises to look for other means to reduce carbon footprint and the result was data center outsourcing.

Gartner defines data center outsourcing as “a multiyear or annuity contract or relationship involving the day-to-day management responsibility for operating server/host platforms, including distributed servers and storage.” According to Datacenter Dynamics, the Data Center Industry Census 2011 indicates that worldwide investment in outsourcing would reach $8 billion in 2012. And as per the Association for Data Center Managers (AFCOM), by 2015 the talent pool of technical staff will shrink by 45%. All these statistics point to the fact that data center outsourcing is fast becoming the most legitimate option for enterprises. However, very many enterprises still consider in-house data center to be a viable and cost effective option.

In-House Datacenter versus Datacenter Outsourcing
Let’s look at some of the basic differences between building a datacenter and outsourcing a datacenter.

Building a Datacenter
* Complete control over the operating environment in the datacenter
* Very low risk of losing the lease and being forced to leave the facility
* Ability to use and share existing space, giving IT staff the ability to work in close proximity to the data center floor for a low cost

Outsourcing a Datacenter
* A predictable and operational expenditure model with costs that are easy to estimate and that increase at a consistent rate over the life of the data center
* Additional capacity can be brought on quickly and only as needed, shielding you from having to build out extra capacity that might not be used for many years
* Better access to space and power through the colocation provider’s purchasing power
* Data center is run by professionals with more experience and expertise in the practice of running an efficient and highly available data centre facility
* An ecosystem of partners in the same facility that can be used with extremely low latency via a cross-connect

The useful life of a datacentre is 4 to 7 years, which means increased headache for enterprises as well as the environment. Hence, datacenter outsourcing is the most viable solution when taking into consideration today’s IT environment marked by regulations, directives, carbon footprint and increased costs.

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A Closer Look at Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is defined as “a technology that uses the Internet and central remote servers to maintain data and applications.” In other words, it is the delivery of computing and storage capacity as a service. That means businesses and consumers need not install any applications as they can use applications and access files and documents using a computer with internet access. Hence, thanks to its centralized storage, memory, processing, and bandwidth enterprises can now do more efficient computing than earlier times. Cloud computing is divided into three segments namely applications, platforms and infrastructure. These different segments serve different purposes and provide different products to businesses and enterprises.

The cloud computing services are growing at a faster rate as it offers a dynamic solution for enterprises and businesses to increase their IT capacity or functionality without having to increase personnel, software/applications, and infrastructure. According to Gartner, the fastest growing segment in IT outsourcing is cloud-computing services. It is expected to grow 48.7% to $5 billion in the current year, up from $ 3.4 billion last year. The research director at Gartner, Gregor Petri, is of the view that, “Today, cloud computing services primarily provide automation of basic functions. As next-generation business applications come to market and existing applications are migrated to use automated operations and monitoring, increased value in terms of service consistency, agility, and personnel reduction will be delivered."

The greatest advantage of cloud computing is that it reduces wastage, increases effectiveness, maximizes utilization and facilitates easy access to resources, applications and platforms. Cloud computing is a convenient, on-demand model for network access, which significantly reduces costs, increases storage availability, enhances automation thereby eliminating worries about keeping applications up to date. Moreover, there is extensive flexibility and control of data. Besides, there is higher reliability and up time and increased mobility thereby allowing organizations to access information anytime, anywhere.

Cloud computing services are broadly divided into three categories: Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Of the different cloud computing providers  only a very few can deliver the real power of the cloud at fingertips. Therefore, enterprises must partner with only those cloud-computing providers who have the expertise, robustness of cloud infrastructures, managed services support, and ability to offer the entire IT infrastructure in the cloud.  

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Recent Trends in Data Center Management

The modern day data centers have undergone massive development and evolution over the past few years. They have cooled rooms storing multiple servers and much more. Today’s data centers with an objective to reduce the total footprint have high density servers that require advanced power and cooling systems. Additionally, due to the ongoing security threats, data centers also possess innovative security systems installed that are monitored from remote locations.

At the same time innovations in technology and IT systems have resulted in complicacies that have made data center management a cumbersome process. Till some time back data centers have been very static. Most organizations that went on to operate as IT enabled has set up data centers with much or less physical servers by implementing a straightforward process in monitoring the set ups.

There were situations where it has been observed that the IT team would take account of the server sprawl and the facilities team taking charge of cooling, power and building management. These two groups interacted with each other only in cases when a team was tracking any concern to a component being managed by the other team or while making any alterations in the data center. These teams did not have real-time information about each other’s activities.

Based on recent research on energy requirements, organizations today offer power and cooling capacities with an objective to fulfill the forthcoming demands. In addition to that, many organizations utilize OEM management solutions offered by data center solution providers to manage the data center appliances.

Most organizations today aim to have their IT architecture to enable them expand and not reduce their performance capacity by witnessing heavy expenses on maintenance requirements. No organization wishes to experience problems such as shrinking storage space, overloaded servers, complaints from IT engineers and continuous IT complicacies that would waste their money and time. For being able to perform consistently in this competitive environment an organization requires to resort to advanced data center solutions. Eminent data center providers provide services such as:

·         Dedicated hosting India

·         Co-location services

·         Bandwidth services

·         Load balancing

·         Disaster recovery services

·         Advanced firewall services

Simultaneously, with any kind of economic change, the data center space too acquires a premium that makes power costs to rise. Hence, enterprises’s find it difficult to spot a space to establish the additional server capacity and offer power cost efficiently. Addressing this issue of space, enterprises that minimize space requirements resort to blade servers that toned down a server in a compact form so that numerous servers could be accommodated in the same rack space.

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