Your high-tech landlord – Is affordable colocation your most imporant real estate?

Your high-tech landlord – Is affordable colocation your company’s most important real estate?

Your data center is probably more important to your business than it was 10 years ago. Organizations of all sizes have come to expect 99.995% uptime to keep revenues flowing and to retain customers, and to communicate with key vendors.

But it is shockingly expensive to build an enterprise data center with such requirements. Some of the requirements to meet such high levels of uptime include:

• Hardened data center facilities: In Midwest data centers, F5 tornado resistant data centers are important.
• Data center power redundancy: Can you afford two utility feeds, two generators, and two UPS systems?
• Data center cooling redundancy: You’ll need at least two air conditioning systems with double the air conditioning your require.
• Data center compliance and certifications: Vendors, clients and the government are requiring expensive certifications such as SAS 70 certified data centers and TIA 942 compliant data centers.
• Security: Physical data center security includes the costs, implementation and maintenance of access cards, PIN pads, locking cabinets, and security cameras with staffing to monitor them.

Some companies choose to “get out of the hardware business” and move their critical applications to cloud service providers like Rackspace and Amazon. Many find that the cost of such a move can be expensive, variable, and hard to forecast.

Other companies choose the high-tech landlord route. They search for an outsource data center with key features:

Experience – Companies are choosing outsource colocation facilities that have a track record
Leadership – Are the owners involved in day-to-day operations?
Carrier neutral data center – Multiple telecom providers are available
No cross-connect fees – No monthly fees to remain connected to the telecom carriers
Simple data center pricing model – Easy to understand and easy to forecast
Ability to grow and change – Can you get extra space if you need it?

Do you have the IT expertise you need to make your business successful? Do you need a venue to deliver your mission critical applications? If the answer is yes, contact a high-tech landlord to find out more.

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.