Colocation power costs can justify the trouble of moving a data center

Good data center strategy includes considering the long-term costs of power for the data center, and managing those costs on a long-term basis. Many companies have found that outsource data center facilities (colocation) can help them reduce data center power costs, while improving critical systems availability (uptime).

Companies that pay over 6 centers per kilowatt hour stand to save money by considering outsource data center facilities. Some of these high-tech data center facilities offer power billed as you use it. Lower power costs in the data center mean lower long-term IT costs for your organization.

One note: don’t forget to include the costs of cooling in your power cost estimates. The cost of electricity to cool your computer room is roughly the same as the cost to run the IT equipment. A few outsource data center pricing models include power for cooling in the per kilowatt hour pricing. This type of data center pricing model makes it very easy to forecast growth and change in your data center.

As an added bonus, many outsource data center facilities offer 99.995% uptime. That equates to 36 minutes of downtime or less per year. If the provider offers features like F5 tornado resistant facilities along with power and cooling redundancy, you may be able to save money while improving overall data center uptime.

Ask yourself these questions:
What is the cost of power at your present data center?
Does downtime cost your company sales, credibility, or lost clients?
What sort of resiliency and redundancy (uptime) have you built into your data center?
Then talk to a colocation facility where you can reduce data center power costs while at the same time minimizing your data center downtime.

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.