This audio was created using Microsoft Azure Speech Services
As a potential colocation customer, you’ll want to look beyond basic variables of price or footprint when choosing a partner. The market conditions affecting a provider’s approach can certainly trickle down and affect your service levels, so start your decision-making process with the broader industry backdrop in mind.
Technology trends and increasing competition represent both great opportunity and significant challenge. Providers are changing their models to best address developments as they emerge in order to achieve their own and their customers’ business goals. Here’s what you need to know about the state of the industry.
Shifting Technology Requirements
IT technology and application development has taken resiliency and redundancy unto itself, so colocation providers are seeing a shift towards less demand for redundancy (2N going to N+1 or sometimes even N) when it comes to electrical and mechanical systems.
The long talked about push towards higher rack power density is also happening in support of more compute-intensive workloads and applications brought on by cloud, big data, IoT and 5G. To serve customers now and be agile enough for future technology requirements, colocation providers are moving towards flexible yet repeatable type of builds (pre-fab, flexible-modular power, white space containment pods).
Spread of the Internet Giants
Large cloud providers like Google, Microsoft and Amazon are driving even more demand for colocation services — that’s good for providers, but the trend is also changing some of the traditional colocation design requirements.
For example, an internet search engine or content provider may have a different set of physical infrastructure redundancy requirements than that of a financial institution running a client’s or company’s financial portfolio. The supply and demand impact drives the industry back into a more speculative build.
Increasing Competition
Faced with intense cost pressures, some providers are undercutting current offerings to edge out the competition. More progressive providers, however, are finding ways to further optimize their data center businesses while still providing outstanding results and customer experiences.
The good news for you, is that finding and matching your business and IT needs, risk appetite and requirements is easier than ever before. As the market expands, so does your ability to find an outstanding collaborative provider who can establish a right-sized approach just for you.
Knowledge is Power
Infomart Data Centers and Schneider Electric are working together to address the challenges of colocation customers, developing efficient deployment strategies that supports a variety of customers and their unique requirements.
In our next post, we’ll review the top seven questions for you to ask colocation facilities to make sure your needs will be met and avoid any surprises after SLAs have been signed. In the meantime, download this 451 Research report, Customer Insight: Future-proofing Your Colocation Business, to learn what some customers look for in their colocation provider.
About the Authors:
Joe Reele, Vice President, Datacenter Solution Architects, Schneider Electric
Joe Reele Vice President, Datacenter Solution Architects at Schneider Electric, responsible for bringing together the full suite of Schneider Electric products and services to provide unparalleled right sized, innovative and complete solutions for our customers. Joe influences and inspires a large team of highly talented professionals to provide cutting edge designs, innovative solutions and operational models for Mission Critical Facilities/Operations. Joe has an impressive track record of more than 10 years of hands-on experience in strategic planning, business unit development and growth, project development, operations management, and system engineering strategies. Joe provides strong technical and leadership skills with proven ability to successfully analyze an organization’s critical operational business requirements, identify deficiencies and potential opportunities, and develop innovative and cost-effective solutions to meet the customer’s business objectives.
Casey Vanderbeek – Director of Client Technical Solutions, Infomart Data Centers
Casey joined Infomart Data Centers in 2016 to build out Infomart’s solution design and implementation disciplines. He is an expert in understanding customer requirements and being able to identify a solution to meet their needs. Casey has a 20-year history in supporting, planning and managing information technology initiatives. Immediately before joining Infomart Casey spent 10-years with ViaWest where he was instrumental in building the Oregon market and was the lead solution engineer for the Pacific Northwest and Northern California. His experiences in managing IT Teams and corporate data center initiatives has given Casey the ability to address the real-world concerns of Infomart’s customers. Casey has a BA in Business Management from the University of New Mexico.
