5 Benefits of Outsourcing Your Data Center

Any decision-maker involved in the maintenance of a data center is faced with the ongoing challenge of assessing the training of IT staff, compliance, environmental regulations, and aging equipment. In the process, inevitably you will be faced with yet another dilemma – whether to continue to host your data center solutions internally or externally to meet your expanding needs.

If you have some reluctance about “turning over” control of your data center, consider these 5 benefits of using a colocation center.

1. State-of-the-art equipment. Making the move to update your equipment comes with significant costs but in many cases that type of investment is necessary to keep up with data center demands. With quality colocation centers, which regularly upgrade their equipment, those costs are shared among clients.
2. Decreased risk of downtime. As you know, any downtime with your data center can significantly put a financial drain on your business. Every minute counts – at the rate of $7,900 a minute, according to a study produced by the Ponemon Institute. The unforeseen costs could include the confidence of your customers. By outsourcing your data center operations to a Rated-4 data center, you can decrease the risk of that type of downtime. A colocation center with that rating is classified as a “fault-tolerant site infrastructure with electrical power storage and distribution facilities with expected availability of 99.995 percent.”
3. Increased scalability. As with most companies, business fluctuates. It could be an unexpected spurt of growth or it could be a temporary downslide that impacts your business. Colocation centers offer you the ability to quickly expand your data center capacity without the tedious and lengthy process of building out or upgrading your own data center. Likewise, it enables you to downsize if you need to.
4. Provide distance. In many cases, the main culprit behind downtime is beyond your control. It could be a fire, a natural disaster or an accident that causes a power outage in your area. With part of your data center operations at another location, you can mitigate the risks that your business will experience significant downtime.
5. Satisfy compliance/regulations. Running a data center requires maintaining compliance with various industry regulations. Some companies may not experience difficulty meeting those requirements if they’re able to invest in quality staff and ongoing training. Others may want to consider passing on that responsibility to a qualified colocation center.

As you determine whether to expand your data center internally or externally, contact Lifeline Data Centers, which is Rated-4, to provide you a more in-depth assessment based on your individual business needs. Our team has helped numerous companies in various industries to weigh the possibilities of using a wholesale colocation facility to accommodate their uptime, connectivity and future growth.

Other resources:

• Infographic: The 22 Data Center Compliance Acronyms You Need to Know
• White Paper: Why Data Center Compartmentalization is Important
• Lifeline One Sheet: What You Need to Know About Lifeline Data Centers

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.