Falling bandwidth costs have spurred the business case for companies to either lease or rent data centre space, says Internet Solutions (IS) hosting solutions manager Greg Montjoie.
"The ability is now available to host different operating systems in a central environment when it did not make sense [to do so] before, and the result is phenomenal cost savings."
IS has seen a dramatic increase in demand for data centre space from its customers, he adds.
This resulted in the upgrading of its facilities in the Western Cape. The centre has been expanded from 800 square metres to 2 000 square metres. IS supplies power, connectivity and cooling for the systems.
"A few months ago, we were renting out space of between four to eight square metres; now we are seeing demand for 50 square metres or more."
Montjoie says virtualisation has become a reality, and the market has moved from offering services with no real management to an environment where it enables companies to centralise their applications.
"This allows companies to reduce their IT overheads by up to 30% in some cases, as they do not have to replicate and own their servers across multiple locations. Rather, they can be hosted in one place and then their branches can access the applications on an 'as-needed` basis," he says.
Content is king
Content is another key factor for data centres and the virtualisation of applications, and Montjoie says these go hand-in-hand with the development of a resilient network.
"E-commerce applications can now be hosted through a data centre with such a robust capacity, and it means the users can communicate with each other at LAN (local area network) speeds, rather than over Diginet lines."
The company`s Cape Town data centre is one of four IS operates. Two are located in Gauteng and another in Durban.
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