Data Center Consulting Services
Colocation Site Selection
Colocation Site Selection Consulting is a relatively new phenomenon that has appeared in the last few years. The reason is a fundamental shift in the corporate enterprise mindset due to the current state of the economy. Considering larger build-to-suit data centers has changed in favor of shorter term commitments, more flexibility and less Cap Ex (capital expenditure) colocation facilities. Unfortunately, selecting a colocation data center that fits your company’s specific needs is becoming a full time job for many IT professionals. With recent cut-backs in IT and management personnel, many companies look to outsource this task to professional Colocation Consultants that do this everyday as their sole focus.
Currently there are over 120 collocation data centers located in about 20 areas of California. Many are running out of power and cooling or don’t have cage space available. Finding the ones that have available space can be a time-consuming task. With well over a 3000 data centers nationwide to choose from, researching the best colocation facility or provider could take months to perform. This created the Co-location Site Selection Consultant Industry which freed up valuable IT employee’s time searching for the best data center provider. This allows them to focus on other demanding tasks at hand within the organization. There are some data centers that have low-cost power and space but they are hard to find and ultimately can save up to 75% in monthly Op Ex (operating expense) costs.
Privately owned or build-to-suit data center selection has also increased in complexity and the costs have risen dramatically. The challenges of building your own data center is often made more difficult by local municipalities, state and federal regulation. Here are just some of the major obstacles facing building your own data center:
- Site selection time frame
- Carrier fiber availability
- Time to permit a project building
- Hot isles, cold isles configurations
- Optimization of current and future technology
- Power design for today and the future (N, N+1, N+2, 2N, PDU, diesel generators)
- HVAC construction
- Security (physical, logical)
- Floor loading
- Seismic-bracing
- Acquisition parameters
- Noise abatement concerns
- Air quality regulation
- Capacity and expansion planning
- Difficult financing in today’s environment
- Major cash outlays that could be used for better purposes
- Communication problems between respective IT and real estate acquisition groups
The whole idea of owning your in-house data center becomes less attractive compared to colocation; yet, in some cases, a side by side financial comparison between the two options is still warranted.
What Are Your Options For Colocation Consulting Services
- Website Colo Referral Services:
There are websites that offer a colocation referral quoting service. While one actually cannot consider these consulting services, it is worth mentioning them as an option. These companies basically collect your basic information and mass distribute them to data centers in a specific area. This method doesn’t provide any recommendations or consulting services but it is a way to get proposals and a lot of phone activity from data center sales reps.
- Data Center Real Estate Consulting Services:
Several commercial real estate companies have tried to penetrate the data center market. They typically take a real estate transactional approach by stating the descriptive facts and features of the data center with minimal understanding of the operational functionality to data center selection. Their services are geared more towards purchasing or leasing an entire data center rather than how to successfully operate in one. Their main task was identifying data center conversions or retrofit facilities. While they have a good understanding of the real estate transaction and market conditions, they usually have very little experience on operational functionality, power distribution, HVAC, security/safety and fiber networks. Currently some real estate companies are trying to migrate over to colocation consulting services but find they lack the expertise required for this type of service.
- Colocation Consulting Services:
Colocation consulting companies takes an operational approach working with clients. Due to the increased complexity of data center colocation, you need to select a consulting company with IT, strong sales and negotiation experience. Colocation clients sign a “service agreement” with a data center and not a “real estate” transaction agreement. Colocation consulting is all about power, security, network connectivity, systems redundancy and data center choices. Most qualified colocation consultants provide clients with hands-on data center guidance; an extension to your operations staff as a trusted adviser. Make sure your consultant can perform the following:
- Needs assessment and future requirements identification
- Site location and environmental risk assessments
- RFP generation and ability to respond to questions from data centers
- Perform data center evaluation and functionality comparisons
- Schedule site tours and identify things to look for at the data centers
- Contract negotiation, MSA and SLA review
- Carrier, managed services and relocation recommendations
About DataCenterAndColocation: www.DataCenterAndColocation.com
- Our data center and colocation consulting company, located in San Diego California, represents approximately 3000 data centers and colocation centers across the US. At no cost to our clients, we deliver highly competitive bids for colocation. Whether you are moving your existing colocation site, adding data center sites or establishing a disaster recovery site, our service is your best solution to reduce costs and free employee valuable time. Our specialty is identifying very high quality and low power cost data centers. Over 25 years of telecom, data center and sales experience.