Building a data center is an incredibly costly proposition for any organizations – $270 million over a 10-year period is the typical cost of a 5 Megawatt facility, according to research by CBRE. This is a dramatically large amount of spend to consume on a facility when in most cases using either cloud services or colocation services will net the same or better results for the average company. There a quite a number of benefits to utilizing a service provider like Vault Networks to provide colocation and cloud services instead of investing in a data center, such as:
- More control over your usage
When a data center is built from scratch (or a building is converted into a data center), the resources that will power the data center need to be accounted for from day one, and relationships need to be built with internet service providers in order to provide network connectivity to get applications on line. This is before considering things that need to be put into place such as cooling systems, security, and more – not to mention keeping them updated and running as required.
When using a colocation service or the cloud, this is the problem of the service provider. Colocation customers just need to worry about the space, power and connectivity requirements that they have for their applications and Cloud customers just need to concern themselves regarding required computing resources (and managing the applications, of course). As a result, there is a lot more control over what needs to be acquired from a service provider as opposed to building a facility from scratch or purchasing a data center.
- CapEx vs. OpEx
Not only are the costs lower with colocation services and cloud, they are easier to swallow as well. In any real estate deal, lots of money needs to be brought to the table upfront to get an agreement in place. This is the opposite of a colocation or cloud agreement, where costs are smaller and available as a monthly service as opposed to having to produce the capital to purchase a facility outright. This is sometimes referred to as Capital Expense (CapEx) vs. Operating Expense (OpEx), and in most cases OpEx is a lot easier for organizations to manage into their budget.
- Improved Efficiency through Virtualization
The truly unfortunate thing about owning a data center is that as technology becomes more efficient, the data center is still something that you as a business owner will own forever, until it is sold off. So a facility that was just right 5 years ago might be 3 times the size of the space required for your business today because of virtualized applications – or your business might have grown exponentially and the data center is too small to accommodate all of the hardware, and another data center needs to be purchased. With a colocation environment or cloud, simply talk to your provider about your current needs and make the appropriate adjustments as needed when space needs change. As always there is no large capital expense involved – it’s just a matter of scaling resource needs.
There are many other reasons to look at using a service provider like Vault Networks instead of going it alone and building a data center – access to an ecosystem of internet service providers, knowledgeable technicians and consultants in place to assist you with developing your project, and more – but if you still have questions, feel free to call us for a free consultation. We will be happy to show you how you can get more for your money by using our cloud service, colocation service, or both to get a better result than purchasing a full data center. To learn more about our services, please call us at (305) 735-8098 option 2 or by emailing sales@vaultnetworks.com.