DCD Intelligence Report: Data Center Riskiness over Flexibility

In new research conducted by DCD Intelligence, an analysis group that specializes in the telecom and IT sectors, the cost of operating a data center has led to operators taking risky chances to lower them.

“Since the global financial crisis, cost and budget have become new industry watchwords and particularly in the context of international data center strategy these factors are becoming increasingly important,” Nicola Hayes, managing director of DCD Intelligence, said to XTCA-Systems. “A wide range of factors are taken into consideration when crafting a strategy, yet according to our sources cost has traditionally resided towards the bottom of a long list of considerations.”

In the report, 30 interviews were conducted with senior personnel responsible for their organizations data center strategies on an international level, all of which indicated that companies are willing to take on risk more often than in recent years, prior to the global financial crisis.

The report also shows that many different businesses are considering programs that will consolidate existing facilities, and offer alternatives to building new ‘owned’ data centers.

Due to budget cuts seen in many of the businesses that contributed information to the report, many have begun to move away from highly resilient Tier 4 facilities. Instead, Tier 3 facilities are being seen as an efficient alternative to the pricey Tier 4.

“There is a trend towards building-in resilience at the application layer though – as most large organizations operate hundreds or thousands of applications – it is difficult to predict how they interact with each other. Application resiliency is still in its early stages,” said Hayes. “All of this is not to say that companies are taking unnecessary risks; indeed it would appear that for the past decade companies have been overestimating risk-based concerns since when money was readily available, this was the more cautious approach.”