Many reports have often suggested that 99% of
businesses fail in the first two quarters because of ill
planning and lack of visibility. Surprisingly, businesses don’t fail when they
have a dearth of work; businesses face a nose dive when they start growing! Yes,
it’s the growth that companies are unable to manage and they lose their brand
value before building a brand of their own. Can say, death via negative branding!
Now if
we look deeper into the cause – effect equation, this failure happens because
most the companies, during the inception mode, try to do everything on their
own (both core and non-core operations). As they scale up, they are unable to
manage the non-core, time consuming elements stunting seamless business
service. These issues of not prioritizing operational elements take the growing
organizations from sunlight to darkest ally of spiral failures.
One of the elements (unless it is the core
operations of an organization) that takes up a lot of time for any growing
organization is managing the data and data related services. Every business
today leverages IT in one way or the other. IT is no more an enabler but a close
partner for every business. Today, a CTO sits next to CEO when it comes to
formulating innovative strategies.
According to a recent survey of Fortune 500 companies by
Forbes, most IT leaders evaluate and implement the option of outsourced data centers over
in-house operation.
So what are top 5 reasons companies choose to outsource their
operations to datacenter and at times, dedicated server
hosting:
Reason 1: Guaranteed Uptime, every time!
It is important to note that outsourced
datacenter services come with a sheer responsibility of services providers. The
services are governed by service level agreements (SLAs) that held service
providers answerable for all the environmental and infrastructure elements. The
SLAs include unsaid commitments to state-of-the-art building systems and
designs, maintained at the industry best standards level to reduce downtime and
subsequent financial penalties.
According
to Gartner, the average recovery time for total data center outage is 134
minutes which no startup business running its own datacenter can commit. Outsourcing
thus becomes the best option.
Reason 2 –Low on CapEx, Boosts Branding!
Data center outsourcing has been a prominent
choice of startup and growing businesses as it gives leverage of moving the
high CapEx requirement to low OpEx. This indeed comes with flexibility to expand
the need at any hour of the day/ night ensuring consistent business value
delivery.
CapEX to OpEX, agreed! How
it effects branding? Rather how it boosts branding?
With adoption of world class data center
services, in fact dedicated hosting; your clients are assured of your sound
decision making. This doesn’t end here as you may also attract investor
confidence and higher motivation of employees in your growth plans. A well
thought-out service level agreement and outsourcing partnership, one can assure
long-term solid foundation for futuristic growth plans for the business.
Reason 3 - Creating Distances for Risk
Mitigation
Data center helps companies to mitigate by
ensuring adequate distance between a company’s headquarters and its production
data center. Uncertain business disruptive events such as utility blackout or
the occurrence of a natural disaster can be mitigated in comparatively small
turnaround time. It is though important to take into account the latency in
response for applications in the data center and between. No wonder we are seeing
smaller and robust data center hubs and colocation facilities in key markets catering
high quality inventory to mitigate risks.
Reason 4 - Increased Focus, core business!
Building a new datacenter or upgrading an
existing is not an easy task and can take anywhere up to 2 years or more. The
business agility definitely gets impact as a critical amount of resources is
being spent to build up a data center/ dedicated hosting. This doesn’t end here
and despite building a state-of-art data center, business heads may end up
scratching heads to deal with under-utilization of capacities of in-house
datacenters. When it comes to an outsourced data center model, the troubles of upgrading
IT infrastructure and building systems are shifted to the outsourced data service provider.
Enabling the CIOs and IT managers focus more on important activities contributing
to business goals.
Reason 5 - Regulatory Compliance and Audits,
all managed!
With
industry standards upgrading very often, there has been a constant increase in
technical and regulatory pressures impacting business infrastructure in most
organizations. Outsourced data center model ensures compliance and audit
capabilities to meet the SSAE16 standards, the health insurance portability and
accountability act (HIPAA) and many other government regulations. It is very
difficult for a growing company to invest and maintain these standards (where
it would need to employ dedicated staff for regulatory control management).
So,
where are we heading?
As per
Gartner report published early this year, the data center outsourcing market in
India is growing at a rate of 25-30%. With this, the third party data center is
expected to grow at a rate of 80% in the coming years. Innovative business ideas may want to take
utmost advantage of dynamic market environment. In such scenarios, improved
connectivity and latency are two key elements for growth. Datacenters are an
answer to this growing need!
