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Let us know which data center you'd like to visit and how to reach you, and one of team members will be in touch shortly.
Tell us about your infrastructure requirements and how to reach you, and one of team members will be in touch shortly.
Let us know which data center you'd like to visit and how to reach you, and one of team members will be in touch shortly.
One of the most basic premises in business is that the cost of something must always be less than the benefit it delivers. In the context of IT, data center cost is generally far less than the benefits a data center can deliver for a business’ online presence. Here is a quick guide to what you need to know.
Data center costs can be roughly grouped into two categories. These are implementation and running costs.
Implementation costs for data centers are largely the same as for any construction project of a comparable size. A significant percentage of the implementation cost will be determined by the cost of real estate. This in turn is largely determined by the location.
The rest of the cost is materials and labor. These also tend to be influenced by location but possibly less so than the cost of real estate. Data center costs are typically higher than the costs of residential construction due to the need for specialist infrastructure. They are, however, in line, with the costs of industrial construction.
If a company builds an on-premises data center, then it will absorb the full cost of the implementation itself. They will have to pay this upfront although they may use financing to spread the cost. If a third party builds the data center, they will absorb the upfront data center costs. These will then be passed on to whoever uses the data center.
The main running costs for data centers are utility, staff, and infrastructure costs.
Utility costs: The main utility costs are electricity and internet. Modern data centers leverage advanced power-distribution and cooling systems to minimize electricity usage. They also increasingly generate at least some electricity on-site (using renewable sources). This has helped to reduce electricity costs although they do still tend to be significant.
Staff: On-site staff are required for security, maintenance, and problem resolution. They may also be required for customer support.
Infrastructure: Data center infrastructure tends to be on a fairly short upgrade cycle. This is partly because it typically undergoes heavy use. It’s also partly because data centers are very quick to upgrade to newer technologies.
Here are five key features of data centers and a guide to the benefits they deliver for your online presence.
The most obvious benefit of security and compliance is that it protects businesses from the consequences of criminal activity. This is a fair point but security and compliance deliver many other benefits too. In essence, robust security and compliance both depend on operational efficiency. This means that improving your security and compliance tends to benefit other areas of your operations.
Having an online presence has become increasingly core to the operations of many businesses. This has delivered many benefits but it also means that losing that online presence, even temporarily, can lead to serious issues.
As a result, businesses need to make reliability a top priority. Using data centers gives businesses far greater control over their IT infrastructure than using public clouds. It therefore gives them much more ability to implement measures to maximize the reliability of their online presence.
It’s common knowledge that modern internet users typically want whatever resources they’re accessing to be delivered immediately, if not sooner. Modern businesses need to be ready to fulfill their expectations.
This requires a combination of high-performance hardware, carefully implemented software, and fast, reliable network connectivity. In particular, businesses should try to leverage fiber optics and 5G as much as possible. These requirements are much easier to achieve in a data center than in a cloud due to the higher level of control they offer.
At a high level, high-performance hardware is hardware with the highest level of specification available at any given time. At a more detailed level, high-performance hardware is hardware that delivers the best performance for its intended purpose. This means that details matter.
For example, two processors with identical cores, frequencies, and caches may deliver very different performances because they have different architectures. Looked at in isolation, neither may be objectively better (or worse) than the other. Looked at in context, however, one may be clearly a better choice than the other for a particular application.
On a similar note, using a data center makes it easier for businesses to implement new technologies as soon as they are ready to do so. Businesses do not have to wait until cloud vendors decide to support an emerging technology (or risk them not doing so).
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