What is expansion of a data centre?
With more data distribution and greater demand for IT consumerisation, organizations now need more hardware, resources and data centre bandwidth. Furthermore, the impact of the cloud is shaping the design of modern data centers.
Today’s data center is a critical asset for virtually any company business — and the need to house and maintain an ever-increasing amount of capacity for digital assets is growing exponentially. With impacts around cloud technology, virtualization, and the growth around data – the industry are asking some big questions around the capacity of their systems infrastructure. When an organization is faced with the need to expand or modernize their data center, they must choose to either build a new facility, retrofitting existing data center space or find a business partner for colocation.
As with everything, a major consideration is cost and a strong case must be made choosing the right service enterprise provider which can lower total cost of ownership, including moving capital expense to operating expense
What trends are impacting data center expansions?
As data center providers look ahead to modernize or expand their current data center capacity or build out their existing buildings, determining future technology trends and needs can be difficult. A significant company capital investment today has repercussions that last for years. With this in mind address the needs when it comes to understanding mission critical data center expansions or construction for the site development.
- Challenge. The demand on a data center is expanding constantly, while IT organizations face limited budgets and space, business growth and ever-changing technology requirements to expand.
- What’s at Stake. To modernize and meet demands, IT must make one of three choices: build a new facility in an existing or new location buildings, retrofit existing space, or contract with a trusted service provider.
- The Solution. Companies within IT and business must come together to determine the data centers future growth capacity and evaluate the total cost of ownership that comes with each choice.
Why build or buy a data center?
As you examine your own business requirements, it’s very important to understand what’s actually causing data center growth.
- Outgrowing current operations capacity
- Outdated equipment
- Global expansion
- Market trends — Enabling mobility and Internet of Things (IoT)
- Mergers & acquisitions
- Spinoff enterprises
- The move to Big Data and Analytics
- Disaster recovery
- Security
When you look at the use-cases driving your organization, it’s absolutely critical to involve the data center as it houses the critical data supporting your companies business. This is why your data center should work for you, without causing headaches. Remember, unless your data center is the core of your business, they shouldn’t require so much commitment.
What are the options for the expansion of a data centre?
Refreshing or upgrading an existing data centre can be a cost-efficient way of improving the overall reliability and capacity of an existing site. Improvements to cooling and electrical infrastructure can increase availability, substantially improve efficiencies, and should your data centre be at risk of failure it is the ideal time to install resilience into the infrastructure.
Expansion of your existing facility often takes place while the data centre is still operational and, in many cases, hindered by the infrastructure already in place.
Our experienced project team can undertake and manage the entire process and will make the expansion of your data centre smooth and stress free. Working as a team with the client we discuss and fully understand their expectations which will determine the correct approach to the expansion plans and will limit any risk to your live IT services.
We believe the key to success is communication with you, the client. With our expertise in data centers and other complex technical environments you can be confident that the impact on day to day operational activities will be minimal.
Why are data centres growing?
According to a recent report from Research and Markets, the global data center market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of over 2% during the period 2019-2025. In the U.S. alone, the data center market is expected to reach revenues of over $69 billion by 2024.
This rise in the amount of data produced is driven by various factors including the increasing use of smart devices, the growing usage of the Internet and mobile data, digitalization, cloud-based technologies, big data analytics and the Internet of Things. This exponential increase in the amount of data produced is in turn driving the demand for more storage space, which has contributed to an unprecedented growth in the global data centre construction market over the last few years.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing?
Cloud Computing is an agile enterprise option that is easily scalable, expanding and contracting as required. Offering potentially unlimited capacity, it’s easy to see its appeal, but there are costs and considerations for users to consider before establishing it is the right choice for any single use case.
Where requirements for demand are unclear or subject to rapid changes, a Cloud offering has a significant advantage, however where there is a steady, consistent or predictable level of demand then a user is unlikely to take advantage of this ability.
Where requirements require resilience, redundancy or physical diversity which are beyond the abilities of a user’s own estate then again a Cloud service can provide these, however if a user already has a presence in the required geographic region, or is able to meet the requirements for redundancy and resiliency themselves with their own facilities then again a Cloud service may not add value.
Where requirements depend upon high performance integration with local services, with low latency and high bandwidth, then again, a Cloud service is likely not going to be able to offer the performance that local facilities can offer.
For some users it will not be a substantial concern but, unlike a dedicated on-site Data Centers, using a Cloud service does not allow full control of the underlying IT systems, instead a level of control, support and responsibility is handed over to a third party and for some users this is not going to be acceptable.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of data centres?
Data Centers can be specified to meet individual organisational requirements and allows full control – and responsibility – over the physical equipment and how the data is managed and stored. Using a physical data center means you are able to provision your own computing power, electrical capacity and cooling. This can be a significant advantage for some applications but can also be the biggest downside.
Although a modern facility will often be somewhat scalable or modular, it is unlikely that capacity can be increased significantly in any less than a number of weeks or even months. Owning and operating Data Centers requires good capacity management, forecasting and planning; if an organisation is able to deliver these elements well then a physical Data Center will often be the best choice for the known demand.
