When it comes to choosing a data centre for hosting data and applications, it is clear that there are numerous factors to be considered. Cost, proximity, connectivity and availability will all feature highly in the list of criteria, but what else should be considered? Is the way in which data centres are used changing to the point that this list needs to be reassessed?
“Clearly deciding if a data centre is going to be a good fit for you depends a lot on what you’re looking for and what you’re trying to do in the facility. As an absolute starting point, getting the basics right is still very important,” said Steve Wallage, managing director for Broadgroup Consulting.
“At the end of the day you can’t risk your precious data being lost, having problems or being inaccessible due to outages. So you’re looking for a facility that has good security and good performance and is run by a credible provider. That means a decent track record as well as other checks and certifications that will allow you to feel comfortable with your choice.”
Overall, we see a lot of IT departments getting much smaller so a lot of expertise isn’t so readily available in-house anymore. So a factor influencing choice can also be how much support and service the provider can give you, Steve Wallage, Broadcom Group
User supports
Many data centres have historically left it up to the user to manage and run things themselves. They have provided space and power but it has been up to the customer to install their own technology and to do all the management and administration. That is no longer a situation that will suit all comers, particularly smaller companies and those getting into new areas.
“Overall, we see a lot of IT departments getting much smaller so a lot of expertise isn’t so readily available in-house anymore. So a factor influencing choice can also be how much support and service the provider can give you,” said Wallage.
This is an important point because it is here that data centres can be most easily differentiated.
“Some are basic collocation providers or wholesale providers with bigger space and longer term deals but depending on the need of the company they might be better off with a managed service provider which has its own data centre and also offers some hosting or cloud infrastructure type offerings.”
“Some of the operators at the lower end of the value chain will say that they have partners to provide that so it partly depends on whether a company wants to go through a sort of partner route or have one provider.”
DC ecosystems
The next point of importance in Wallage’s opinion is the ecosystem surrounding a data centre.
“Historically that was about the telecoms and how close you were to the subsea cables like Hibernia Atlantic and Celtic Connect but today it’s morphed into two other things. The first is cloud and a lot of data centres today are offering access to Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services or Google,” he said.
“The second is that we’re seeing a lot more vertical market specialisations. So if, for example, you’re a financial customer that has links to particular stock exchanges and perhaps to international clearing houses for different currencies, you might want to work with a provider that has an ecosystem that supports that. You do pay a premium for that but you are getting access to that sort of area.”
In Wallage’s opinion, as the market has matured and competition has increased, higher quality providers have entered the market offering more alternatives.
“Cloud has become very central to that. Recently the quarter one results of a number of big data centre players in the US have been published and a number of them said that about 75% or more of their deployments in the next quarter will be moving to cloud. So we’re certainly seeing a major change in that,” he said.
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