With Cloud Computing, why do companies continue to buy and lease data center equipment?

With cloud computing, why do companies continue to buy and lease data center equipment?

Cloud computing is becoming pervasive. From software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications to virtual servers to physical servers to disk space to networking to security, you can rent just about anything in the data center via cloud computing. Why do companies still buy or lease? Here are three reasons:

Cost
The cost of renting versus buying will often be higher over time. Rental company make their margins in the monthly fees. For a well-defined and managed data center infrastructure, Buying and sometimes leasing can have major cost savings over time. You have to do the math for your environment.

Control
Not all applications behave well. Business or industry specific applications are often are troublesome. IT staff must dedicate extra servers, memory, disk, network and manpower to keeping these applications available to the users. Owning the data center hardware gives IT more control over the applications, delivery and the quality of the service to the users.

Compliance
The federal government is getting bigger. Data center compliance and certification requirements are on the rise. Cloud computing Many privacy and financial regulations are not yet audit-ready with cloud-based computing environments. These companies need their own data center hardware just to pass audits.

Owning your own hardware forces companies to consider the data center facilities. In-house data centers are expensive to build, maintain and upgrade. If high data center uptime (99.995% uptime or higher) is a requirement, wholesale colocation and outsourced data center facilities can be the most cost-effective alternative. Some wholesale and retail colocation providers directly address many of the compliance and audit problems that companies face. Colocation can be a perfect match for companies that need to buy or lease their data center equipment.

Interested in learning more about owning your own hardware? Call the data center experts.

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.