As 2015 draws to a close, companies are looking ahead to the New Year and crafting business plans for a successful 2016. As you look to refine your ever-evolving Internet of Things (IoT) strategy, it would be wise to position data center infrastructure at the core of your plan.
As IoT continues to develop, computer systems and communications networks are in overdrive trying to keep up with the demand and scale of all the data that is being generated. In order to meet these increasing infrastructure capacity requirements, a growing number of organizations are moving away from traditional on-premises corporate IT facilities and turning to service providers that deliver data center services such as colocation and cloud computing. In fact, market research firm IDC reports IoT alone will generate the need for 750 percent more data center capacity in service-provider facilities than consumed today.
What Colocation Delivers
For companies that may be new to data center colocation, its benefits range from security to transparency. With colocation, instead of maintaining computing systems in a private data center, an organization houses them in a data center owned and managed by a colocation provider.
The colocation customer organization retains all control over its systems, but the colocation provider manages the data center security, network connections, power, and cooling. In some cases, the colocation provider offers value-added services to customers, such as a data center infrastructure management (DCIM) system that provides additional layers of visibility and control.
One of the top benefits of colocation is scalability. Additional capacity can be brought on quickly, which is a key requirement for fast-growing IoT deployments. Colocation also allows for lower total cost of ownership, meaning organizations can typically maintain their data center operations for much lower total cost than they could build and operate a private data center.
Multi-tenant data centers are enabling companies to reduce capital investments and only purchase what they require, while providing infrastructure and delivering robust and highly reliable enterprise and carrier-grade telecom solutions.
The Colocation Advantage
By tapping colocation, companies can achieve a number of operational improvements, including:
Agility and time to market. The colocation model turns the capital expenditures associated with building a data center into operating expenditures associated with “renting” data center space. In other words, customers are not being locked into a sunk capital cost. As a result, organizations can be more agile. They can more quickly scale IT capacity where they need it, and reduce or eliminate IT capacity where there’s no longer a business case for it. These capabilities can position firms to take advantage of new market opportunities and implement them quickly.
Focus. Companies need to be focused on delivering innovation to customers. And data center infrastructure should be an enabler not an impediment to achieving this goal. Colocation services can relieve organizations from many of the necessary but mundane aspects of IT (such as data center management and monitoring) that are not core to their strategic plan. This will allow IT teams to focus on the company’s strategic mission and vision instead of repetitive tasks such as monitoring and maintenance.
Availability and security. In IoT deployments, the large volume of devices connected to the data center can present an availability and security challenge for organizations. Colocation providers have the focus and core competency to provide the uptime level commitments needed for critical support infrastructure. Additionally, their facilities are typically composed of multiple active and failover power and cooling distribution paths and redundant components, which make them more secure.
Fueling IoT Success
Any company moving forward with an Internet of Things strategy needs to have their data center infrastructure at the core of their plan. The role of the data center in the industrial internet is as an enabler, fueling the success of organizations in the IoT. After all, the data center is the foundation of the IT stack, so as the IT stack becomes more critical to competitive advantage, so too will the data center.
David Mettler is IO’s Vice President of Sales and the Market Director for the United States. David is an experienced and seasoned data center management executive, having held positions previously with CenturyLink Business for Enterprise and Sprint. David received a Bachelor of Science in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia. He is currently based in New York City.
Edited by Ken Briodagh