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Are there ways to actually save money by using and outsource data center?

The answer is yes.  And one of the best ways to save money is to use a carrier neutral data center as the hub of your wide area network (WAN).

Many companies build a WAN in a hub and spoke model.  Other topologies are becoming common, but most still have a centralized location.  Often times this hub has been in a company’s enterprise data center at the home office.

Depending on the location of the home office, circuits may be

Yesterday a small business owner came in to talk about using our data center (colocation) facilities to house his money-making customer-facing systems.  He has had some downtime at his main office, both with electrical problems and with his telecom carrier.  He realizes he needs to do something,  but he came in with the mindset that there is no such thing as affordable colocation.

The reality is that his needs are not much different from large enterprise data centers. How so?

He realizes that downtime costs him both credibility and hard-dollar sales
He is

So you finally have budget approval for your IT disaster recovery project.  How do you choose a disaster recovery center?

SearchDataCenter’s Russell Olsen published an article on geographic diversity that sheds light on the question “how far is far enough” when it comes to your disaster recovery colocation or data center.

Choosing a data recovery site is difficult because there are no clear standards in this area. The closest we get to a standard is a white paper released by the Federal Reserve in response to Sept. 11.

Early versions of this white

Certain industries such and financial services and health care are heavily regulated. Government regulatory bodies have developed dozens of certifications such as Sarbanes Oxley, HIPAA, Graham Leach Bliley, SAS 70, and PCI, and TIA 942. Why should companies are about this alphabet soup of compliance?

The cost of non-compliance is lost opportunities and lost business. Data center certification can go along towards solving compliance problems. Use outsource data centers like Lifeline to solve data center compliance issues.

We talk to many Chicago companies who are considering a disaster recovery colocation site. What are they looking for?

* Hardened data center facilities – companies want an F5 tornado resistant data center.
* Midwest colocation – Chicago companies are looking for a location away from the shadow of the Sears tower, but close enough to have reasonable access without driving costs up.
* SAS 70 data center – many companies want to make sure that their outsource data center is SAS 70 certified.
*Rated-4 data center – most companies expect high levels if

Our passion is helping companies optimize their IT strategies and decisions. We work with companies to help them determine the best solutions for their production data centers and disaster recovery centers. Using external data center (colocation) facilities is one of the easiest ways to manage IT costs while improving service reliability and uptime. We’ll show you how! Find us on Twitter: @lifelinedatactr