Managed facilities versus Enterprise Data centers
By Jayabalan Subramanian
Mumbai, May 9, 2008

In today's dynamic business world, enterprises have to face and rapidly respond to changing market demands besides the challenge of scaling up internal operations to keep pace with expansion. In such a scenario where moving goal posts are the norm, the enterprise data center is what keeps the smooth oiled business machine running. The data center is essentially a physical facility that allows you to store and manage your servers, networks and other computer equipment in a controlled environment. It needs to run 24X7, with minimal down time and disruption and constant monitoring.

Depending on the momentum and direction of a company, it needs to increase spend and people investment into its IT infrastructure and data centers. More often than not, companies are unable to allot sufficient time, money and resources into their data centers for various reasons. These include increased costs of real estate and power to house the mounting number of servers and equipment and constant change in technology that could render some infrastructure obsolete. Day to day management cost is also high. Another important factor is that focus on managing one's own IT infrastructure could distract the company from concentrating on its core competence and business goals.

In countries like India, there is also the problem of attracting and retaining engineers who can support and maintain data centers. Rising attrition levels and paucity of skilled people are another factor why managing a data center internally would not be such a good idea.

With outsourcing of software development and IT maintenance becoming mainstream, why not outsourced data centers?

The reasons are quite compelling as many organizations whether small and medium businesses and mid- to large companies across various industry verticals, have realized.

Supporting changing business needs

Many organizations especially small and medium businesses and start-ups may not have the capital to invest in their own full-fledged data center, especially when they experience tremendous growth and cannot build their infrastructure to time the requirement. Hosting is the answer to their problems since they can utilize capacity on an on-demand basis. For example, a company can rent one or two servers on a monthly basis, and can add servers and storage continually as it grows or at times when traffic load is high. The biggest relief for companies is the freedom to focus on their core competence than on their IT infrastructure.

Reliability

An outsourced arrangement ensures that people with the right skills manage the data center round the clock, 7 days a week. Besides support staff and engineers monitor all critical parameters related to the performance of the network and the hosted servers.

Cost advantage

The sheer economies of scale make for a compelling case in favor of a managed facility. It is especially apparent when redundancies in IT infrastructure are built. Investment in a managed facility is a fixed cost, unlike that of in-house data centers where the amount of time and investment on people and infrastructure keeps mounting. Cost savings can range between 20 and 70 per cent.

Customized solutions

The approach adopted by a hosting company vis a vis an in-house data center is different. For an enterprise, the in-house IT set-up is a cost center that has to be maintained, while the managed services company would put in its resources and skills to come up with solutions to automate and respond faster to requirements. Some of these solutions would be customized depending on requirements.

Accountability through SLA

Enterprises can specify their requirements to the hosted services provider right down to the granular details. For example, a BPO company can specify conditions like zero data loss, zero downtime on the Mail Server, a maximum switchover time of 2 hours between all primary and failsafe servers or complete transparency during a switchover in the event of a disaster.

Green data centers

Shared and co-located datacenters translate into more cost-effective and greener technology since managed facilities can focus on providing the optimal power and cooling capabilities needed by high density servers. Research indicates that data centers contribute to as high as 4% of the total energy consumption in the US. Managing facilities would mean a smaller carbon footprint for enterprises.

Increased bandwidth

Excess bandwidth capacity at managed data centers would ensure that high-speed lines don't slow down even during peak loads. This is especially crucial for Internet companies.

Data center outsourcing solutions

There are various kinds of services available in the market of which the most common options are co-location and dedicated hosting.

Co-location: This is where a company can rent some space to house servers along with the servers of other companies in a shared physical location. Each company's equipment is physically secured. A co-location agreement offers companies the flexibility to upgrade or change technology and requirements as business grows, without having to make increased capital investments.

Dedicated hosting: As the name suggests, it refers to a dedicated site that hosts a company's data center.

Customers usually have the choice of going for full-fledged services, modular solutions or even tailor-made options.

What to look for while choosing a managed services vendor?

Choose a carrier-neutral vendor

Carrier neutrality provides flexibility to work with multiple carriers providing better geographical spread for connecting customer branch location to the hosted location. Further redundancy can be built across multiple carries to ensure higher uptimes. Additionally, a carrier-neutral facility can provide customers with maximum flexibility and redundancy within a deployed network, by integrating services from multiple third-party service providers.

Redundant power supply and air-conditioning:

Power is the most crucial aspect of any Datacenter, and so ensures that there are multiple levels of redundancy in its power provisioning. Redundancies may include primary feeders, diesel generators, best-of-breed UPS Systems and Battery banks, and PDUs (power distribution units), and ensuring uninterrupted power supply even in the unlikely event of a sustained power failure.

To ensure optimal cooling of the equipment housed within the datacenter, check if the service provider has precision air-conditioning systems that closely monitor and regulate the ambient temperature and relative humidity of the datacenter.

A complete 24x7x365 environment

This condition is a given for most data centers. A 24 hour help and support desk should be available for customers. A dedicated group of people would monitor all critical parameters related to the performance of the network and the servers hosted at the customer location over dedicated connections to the Internet. Advanced Monitoring Services are crucial to any enterprise with mission-critical online applications. These would provide failure and pre-failure Notification, Threshold Alarms, and Statistical Trend-analyses.

Security and Surveillance

To ensure physical security of the data center, ensure the presence of multiple levels of physical and electronic security and surveillance measures. These include 24x7 security personnel, Access card readers, Biometric Scanners, and video camera surveillance.

Certification such as ISO 27001 (formerly referred to as BS7799-2) means that the hosted provider is responsible for crucial customer information. We follow the entire ITIL methodologies. We are also looking at ISO 20000 which has to do with the managed services. Since a lot of mission-critical data and applications of customers is hosted on data centers, such certification provides confidence and assurance to customers that their data is in safe hands. The certification ensures that every facet of the organization conforms to Information Security Management Systems mandated by the certifying authority.

Other best practices include ITIL certification and ISO 20000 for managed services.

Connectivity and Bandwidth

Reliable Internet bandwidth through redundant fiber optic cable to ensure maximum uptime and availability is crucial. Check for capped and burstable bandwidth solutions and comprehensive peering arrangements with other ISPs.

Value added services

Value added service is the factor that is he chief differentiator for managed services companies. These could include customized solution, automation tools, server virtualization software and data center management software that ensure efficient management.