Amazon’s data center guru James Hamilton is pretty clear that he sees no reason for most companies to keep constructing new data centers from scratch, but if they have a huge compute load and really have to, they should build way more capacity than they need and sell off the excess a la Amazon itself.

While Hamilton has a vested interest in people moving their compute loads to Amazon’s infrastructure, his build big or don’t build at all mantra resonates with several other IT experts. The consensus: It makes sense for most companies to trust their data center needs to the real experts in data centers — the companies that build and run data centers as a business. More companies will start moving more of their new compute loads — maybe not necessarily all the mission critical stuff — to the big cloud operators. That roster includes the aforementioned players as well as Google, Microsoft, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and others that are building out more of their own data center capacity for use by customers.

More of the GigaOM post from Barb Darrow

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Consider the what it takes for 99.995% uptime enterprise data center facilities management:

F5 tornado resistant data center building- for Midwest colocation

Full data center power redundancy – multiple power feeds, generators, UPS systems and rack feeds

Data center cooling redundancy – multiple, concurrently maintainable cooling systems

Physical security – two factor authentication and multiple layers of loggable physical security

Fire suppression – Reliable, industry standard systems with regular testing and maintenance

Data center compliance and certifications – from SAS 70 to SSAE 16, HIPAA, Sarbanes Oxley, FDA, FISMA and NIST certifications are just a few of the standards

Telecomm redundancy – Multiple telecommuncations feeds with separate entrances into the building

These requirements have nothing to do with Information Technology. They are facilities problems. If a colocation provider can take these requirements off your hands, you’re free to focus on data center management of your business, the applications that support it, and your underlying IT infrastructure.

Yes, wholesale colocation providers can simplify data center management. And if you’re selective, you can use the colocation provider to engineer higher data center uptime levels. Look for a wholesale colocation provider that delivers hardened data centers, N+N data center redundancy, multiple carriers, no cross connect fees, and 99.995% uptime. Power billing based on utilization is key. And don’t forget to shop for low data center power costs.

Wholesale colocation lets you stop worrying about data center facilities management.

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Is your internal data center expensive to operate? Forget what’s in the racks. I’m not talking about servers, networking equipment and storage. I’m talking about facilities: your raised floor, your security, your power, your cooling, your telecommunications infrastructure and your fire suppression. How expensive is it to maintain?

Operating a data center in-house is expensive. Real estate floor space costs, raised flooring, reliable air conditioning systems, specialized security and fire protection all drive up the data center capital costs. Small data centers can easily exceed $1 million in capital up front.

Data center power and cooling redundancy is expensive. Multiple UPS systems are fairly common. Dual generators are rare. Rarer still are in-house data centers have two utility feeds. Data center capital costs are high, but the costs of maintaining and operating generators and UPS systems are high as well. N+N data center redundancy (two of everything) is prohibitively expensive for many organizations. You can’t deliver high uptime without power and cooling redundancy, yet uptime requirements continue to rise.

Staffing is expensive. Do you dedicate half an FTE or more to the maintenance of the data center?

Data center compliance and certifications are expensive. SAS70 (Now SSAE 16) data center certification audits start at about $20,000. Other certifications like the Uptime Institute’s Tier IV data center certification can cost more.

Not only are the data center capital and operating costs high, they’re also unpredictable.

How do you control costs?

Wholesale colocation offers an interesting solution. Wholesale data center providers build and operate high-tech real estate. Here are a few of the reasons that organizations choose to outsource the data center facilities.

You can rent the space you need in these giant data centers.

You can still have full control of your IT equipment and telecom infrastructure.

You can benefit from N+N data center redundancy in power, cooling, and telecom to improve uptime.

In a select few outsourced hardened data centers, you can protect your mission critical systems from F5 tornadoes and other regional risks.

Some Midwest colocation providers offer you access to multiple telecommunications providers with no cross connect fees. You can build telecom hubs to better manage the money spent on telecommunications.

You can trade capital costs for operating costs.

You can build a highly predictable cost model that allows for growth and change.

Sick of getting nickel and dimed to death? Call the outsourced data center experts.

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Your purchasing department would probably say yes. Your legal department might too. One throat to choke. They’re looking at the problem from a vendor management perspective, and fewer vendors is better. Or is it?

Ask yourself these questions:

What if you love the data center facility but the quality of the IT services offered are marginal?

What if you already have vendors for specific IT services?

What if you prefer to choose best of breed vendors for specific projects and technical support?

What if your staff does most of the IT work?

Would it be more sensible to separate the choice of data center provider from the choice of IT services provider?

Most companies that choose wholesale data centers over self-built data centers make the decision based on the uptime they get per dollar spent. That’s because these pure data centers, also known as wholesale colocation, concentrate on one thing: mission critical facilities. 99.995% uptime requires incredible attention to detail with hardened data center buildings, redundant power, cooling, telecom access, and data center regulatory compliance. But not all colocation providers are alike; data center reliability varies greatly based on the companies power, cooling, telecom systems, and compliance. If data center uptime is important, then the sensible approach would be to pick the best-designed facility for your needs.

Does it make sense to reject the best-fit data center facilities provider because they don’t do router work, or AS/400 support, or eCommerce platform support? The answer could be yes. It depends on your organization’s applications and your own staff’s talent in supporting these business-specific applications and their platforms. When considering full-service providers, make sure that you understand the quality of the data center behind the provider’s services. You have the option to pick your own wholesale colocation facility and require your vendors to support the hardware in your colocation space.

If you’re purchasing rack space from a full-service provider, you may be paying too much for your colocation space. Especially if your provider maintains a large staff of IT Support Engineers. Bench time is expensive, and unless these Engineers are fully utilized, your rack space pays for part of the Engineers’ wages. Make sure you consider competitive pricing from other colocation facilities. Data center pricing models are excellent indicators of what vendors value and how they handle their overhead.

Your outsource data center provider does not have to be your IT services provider. You have options. You can choose the best among data center vendors with a little homework.

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SSAE 16 is one of the most widely known tools for providing assurances to data center customers. It is demanded by customers and there is no substitute for it.

And yet, a myth that the SSAE 16 standard is not applicable to the industry persists. As such, data center providers have no choice but to arm themselves with the following facts about SSAE 16 applicability.

The Technical Basis
The technical guidance for SSAE 16 has two major components which are the SSAE 16 standard itself and the related guide titled “Service Organizations –Applying SSAE No. 16, Reporting on Controls at a Service Organization (SOC 1)”.

The very first paragraph of the SSAE 16 standard states that it is applicable when reporting on “controls at organizations that provide services to user entities [i.e., customers] when those controls are likely to be relevant to user entities internal control over financial reporting.”

More of the SOA World article from Chris Schellman

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Many factors play in to the selection secondary data center and office space locations. A good CIO strategy includes multiple geographies in an evaluation of disaster recovery centers. For some organizations Midwest colocation outside of Chicago might be a better solution.

Standard features that many organizations look for when considering disaster recovery centers include:

Hardened data center facilities – With Midwest colocation, F5 tornado resistant data centers building are important, along with earthquake resistant facilities in some areas.

99.995% uptime or better – This is the uptime level expected from Tier IV data centers. Some IT professionals consider the uptime is a DR center to be less important than in the primary data center. If your organization is doing real-time or near-real time data replication, data center uptime in your disaster recovery center is likely as important as in your primary enterprise data center.

Multiple carriers with no cross-connect fees – Access to multiple telecom carriers ensures diverse and reliable connectivity in the event of a disaster, or on an ongoing basis with real-time replication. Data centers with no monthly cross connect fees significantly reduce ongoing costs.

Data center compliance and certification – Compliance and certifications in the disaster recovery center are just as important as the primary data center.

Data center pricing model – Simple is better. Most organizations seem to prefer to pay for power, cooling and space incrementally as they use it.

Advantages to Midwest data centers located outside of Chicago include:

• Geographic diversity, especially for Chicago-based organizations.
• Overall lower costs, including, lower data center power costs, lower costs of construction labor, and lower data center capital costs.
• A theoretically lower risk from placing the disaster recovery center outside of one of the USA’s five largest cities.

Wholesale colocation providers offer the most flexibility for organizations that prefer to own and control their own telecom connections, network, servers and storage. Some wholesale data centers offer disaster recovery office space. This space can be custom fit by the organization to use for emergency call centers or workspace recovery.

Considering disaster recovery options in Chicago? Consider Midwest colocation providers outside of Chicago in your search.

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Here’s a simple version:

• Cloud computing is a fancy name for software and/or hardware that is available via the Internet.
• Colocation is high-tech real estate, or outsourced data center space, where you can operate your company-owned software and hardware.

Here’s another way to look at it:

• Picture cloud computing as a highly reliable (99.995% uptime) computer room full of network equipment, servers, disk storage, software and connectivity, all ready to use for a monthly fee.
• Picture colocation as an highly reliable computer room that’s empty, waiting for your network equipment, hardware, disk storage, software and connectivity to complete the picture.

Both approaches have value. Smaller companies and startup companies may prefer a cloud computing model because it does not require much internal Information Technology expertise to operate. Startup costs can be low with cloud computing, and the barriers to entry are usually small.

Larger companies and companies with strong Information Technology departments often choose colocation, also known as wholesale colocation or wholesale data centers, to house their computer rooms. These companies value colocation’s flexibility for growth and change. Data center capital costs are enormous, and building your own no longer makes sense for many companies that need high levels of reliability. Many cloud computing data centers are housed in wholesale colocation facilities, because the cloud services vendors appreciate the control and cost management benefits of wholesale colocation.

It is also very common for companies to have both internal data center space and cloud computing services. Many companies use software-as-a-service(SaaS) such as Salesforce.com, LinkedIn.com, and ConstantContact.com in addition to having hardware and software of their own.

Both approaches can solve problems like data center compliance and certification requirements, which are expensive and difficult to maintain. SAS 70 data centers, SSAE 16 data centers, TIA 942 certifications and required by many clients and vendors as a condition for doing business. Wholesale colocation and cloud computing services can meet these compliance requirements with little or no extra work from the client company.

Which solution is right for you? For more information, give us a call at 317.423.2591.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. State of server technology and operating systems
II. State of virtualization and cloud computing
III. State of data center facilities
IV. State of systems management and data center services
V. Survey background and demographics

An overview
In early 2011, SearchDataCenter.com released the Data Center Decisions 2011 survey to gauge trends and understand the factors that influence data center evolution in today’s enterprise. We received more than 1,000 responses from IT professionals spanning numerous roles within the enterprise. In this special report series, we analyze what this data means and take a look at how many of the numbers compare to our 2010 findings. These articles examine several facets of data center design and management to identify interesting trends and surprising revelations about the state of IT operations across many industries.

Article 1: State of server technology and operating systems
After years of economic uncertainty, many companies appear ready to begin spending more on data center hardware. However, the continued emphasis on tight budgets has IT professionals taking a closer look at the hardware they integrate into their data centers. In the first article of this series, we examine what type of server technology IT professionals are choosing for their environments and what factors have influenced IT professionals’ choice of server vendors, including expanded coverage of integrated infrastructures in the data center. The composition of operating system (OS) deployments are also changing in the enterprise, so we’ll look closely at the major OS versions for everyday and mission-critical systems.

More of the SearchDataCenter report

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Data center compliance requirements are increasing. Federal and state requirements are on the rise. Organizations are now faced with clients and vendors who require data center compliance.

Physical compliance can often be the most capital intensive and expensive. Data center security and certification requirements can make outsource colocation facilities more cost effective than doing it in-house .

Colocation facilities focus on many certifications and compliance requirements. Here are a few:

SAS-70 data center compliance
HIPAA
FDA
PCI
FISMA
Sarbanes-Oxley
TIA-942 compliant data center

Do the math. Does it make sense for an outsource computer room to do the compliance and certification work for you?

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Some studies have shown that a little over half of commercial organizations will be faced with a change in their primary data center in the next five years.  These companies usually move because they are faced with a shortage of data center space, data center power or data center cooling. Some will be moving the data center because the headquarters is also moving   Are you considering moving your data center?.  If so, you are probably considering outsource computer room facilities as well as the alternative of building your own computer room.  Is there value in outsource data center facilities? Are outsource data center costs lower than building your own?

The answer is often yes.  Unless your company has in-house expertise on building mission critical facilities like data centers, there may be great value in considering outsource data centers.  Data center capital costs can be outlandish, even for a small computer room.  The cost of building facilities with uptime levels that are comparable to Uptime Institute Tier IV data centers is even higher.

Ask yourself these questions:

What level of data center uptime does my company require?  If the company needs 99.995% uptime or better, you should consider outsource data center.

What level of mission critical facilities expertise does my company have on staff?  Is the company prepared to build and maintain facilities in-house?

Does it make more sense to trade data center capital costs for operating expenses?  Is the cost of capital too high?

Does data center compliance play a role in my company’s decision?  Outsource data centers with a focus on compliance can solve problems that cost a company tens of thousands of dollars to handle on their own.

Do you have more questions?  Call the outsource data center and compliance experts at Lifeline Data Centers.

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