Data Foundry Blog - Data Centers

Trying to decide if you should build or buy your own data center? An essential step in your decision-making process is estimating the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) to understand how the long-term costs of data center operation compare to colocation. Companies often consider the upfront costs of owning a data center, such as buying the building, buying mechanical equipment, and the cost of securing and paying back a business loan. However, some of the recurring costs are frequently overlooked. Here are 5 recurring operational expenses that are commonly forgotten.

A colocation data center is a data center shared by multiple companies who rent or lease space from the data center’s owner or operator. Colocation data centers are also called multi-tenant data centers. The popularity of these types of data centers has grown since the early 2000s, and analysts predict the colocation industry will continue to grow throughout the 2020s. Many enterprise-sized organizations are seeing value in shutting down some of their own data centers and switching to colocation facilities, which plays a major role in this growth. Small and medium-sized businesses also find value in using colocation because they can own some of their own infrastructure, rather than being tied to the public cloud. There are many reasons for making this choice, most of which revolve around hybrid cloud models and reduced capital expenditure through shared building infrastructure.

It’s no secret that data makes the contemporary world go round. Currently, the amount of generated data is continuing on its dramatic upswing, and enterprises across the globe are shifting their data management strategies off-premises to meet increasing requirements. As data continues to serve as a fundamental asset for a vast host of applications and operations across nearly all industries, finding an ideal place for this critical resource is paramount.

Edge computing and edge data centers are buzzwords popping up in IT publications all over the Internet, but what do they really mean? Edge computing is more straightforward, and has been simply defined as “data processing power at the edge of a network instead of in a cloud or a central data warehouse.” However, edge data centers are being defined in a variety of ways followed by outrageous claims that this new data center concept will “blow away the cloud.” Your preferred definition will likely depend on your industry. Here are 5 widely communicated ones to broaden your perspective.

If you haven’t yet developed a disaster recovery plan for your business, you likely haven’t suffered a major outage yet. The cost of downtime is in the thousands per minute for large companies and thousands per day for small companies (The Ponemon Institute, 2016). For companies whose customers depend on your services being available 24×7, outages result in a loss of customer confidence and can even damage your reputation in the marketplace. A helpful starting point in determining whether cloud or traditional disaster recovery services are best for your business is to determine your budget by finding your cost of downtime and your recovery point and recovery time objectives (RTO and RPO).

When we think about what AI is today and what it will offer in just five years, the difference is drastic. Today we have algorithms that recognize images and interactive voice applications. In five years, digital personal assistants will likely be the norm, digital research assistants will scan documents and compile relevant data, medical assistants will help diagnose and treat patients, financial modeling of “what if” scenarios will grow increasingly complex and accurate, and repetitive tasks will become automated in multiple industries. So, what will the AI transformation mean for your data center or IT infrastructure model?

We were delighted to have around 100 guests join us as we officially celebrated the grand opening of our Texas 2 data center last Thursday evening. Everyone enjoyed poke, shrimp and grits, and a salsa and queso bar (in true Texas fashion) as well as tasty hors d’oeuvres. The majority of guests participated in guided tours of the data center and visited the data halls, mechanical plant, office space and learned about the facility’s redundant infrastructure and security features.

Every data center search should begin with identifying business goals and the long-term infrastructure requirements to help accomplish those goals. Once you’ve determined your top IT infrastructure goals, whether that means improving availability, connectivity, adding disaster recovery options, decreasing capital expenses, or a combination of the above, it’s up to you to look for a data center that meets business needs. To really understand if a facility can meet those needs, you will need to gather detailed information on the power structure, cooling equipment, utility infrastructure, security and more of your top facilities.

We are excited to announce our newest data center in Austin, Texas 2, has successfully passed the final stage of the commissioning process and is now open for business.

Purpose-built data centers, also sometimes referred to as greenfield data centers, are designed to protect IT infrastructure and keep it running 24x7x365. Because these data centers are designed with IT in mind long before construction begins, they provide greater redundancy and resiliency than retrofitted facilities. However, these aren’t the only advantages to purpose-built data centers. In addition to these benefits, they provide a higher level of security and convenience. When tenants are moving and installing servers that cost around $2000-$4000 each, it’s prudent for data center operators to ensure that these processes are as convenient and secure as possible. Operators who design their facilities from the ground up have the most control over this optimization.