An increase in IT applications use influences the increase in “big data”. The term “big data” has been used for decades to describe data characterised by high volume, high speed and high variety, and other extreme conditions. However, the big data era is epitomised for businesses by the risks and opportunities. It offers a rich source of insights to improve decisions but creates challenges for organisations in how they store, manage and analyse big data.
A data centre in-house or outsourced is needed for an organisation's shared IT operations and equipment for the purposes of storing, processing, and disseminating data and applications. Because they house an organisation's most critical and proprietary assets, data centres are vital to the continuity of daily operations. Having a purpose-built facility with redundant power and cooling systems will increase security and productivity of critical business applications.
Managing an in-house data centre requires time, IT expertise and a high budget, which is why businesses typically prefer to run operations from a third-party facility. Data centres are the powerhouses of the industrial world. As technological advances continue to change the way organisations do business, the need for data and power increases. Often, this significant increase in resources is too much for many companies to handle internally or with existing corporate infrastructure. Many hours and personnel are required to maintain the high demand. The utilisation of a third-party data centre allows a business to outsource its power needs.
Organisations benefit from third-party data centres in a variety of ways:
- They allow a company to focus on its consumer objectives instead of technological maintenance;
- Help to reduce the upfront capital investment (capex);
- Provide flexibility that supports future technologies and upgrades;
- Organisations are able to outsource their power needs;
- Savings in personnel costs that are required to maintain the data centres;
- Freeing up internal IT teams to focus on core applications and deliverables;
- Simpler management with little to no regular maintenance;
- Greater reliability with less chance of downtime; and
- Accelerate digital transformation programmes.
While co-location may be a natural choice for many companies, choosing the right provider is not simple. A vital aspect of data is keeping your business up and running. All providers have SLAs (service level agreements) that provide assurances in terms of:
- Network uptime;
- Power service; and
- Temperature stability.
Some of the key considerations when choosing a data centre provider:
- Specific business goals;
- Data centre infrastructure;
- Service reliability;
- Security levels;
- Costs and pricing;
- Facility location;
- Required scalability;
- On-hand support;
- Data centre’s reputation;
- The likelihood of disaster; and
- Extra amenities.
Data centres measure reliability in terms of guaranteed uptime, a metric outlined within the SLA. All data centres have a rating based on how many redundant systems the facility has. This classification system works on a scale of 1 to 4:
- Tier I: Basic site infrastructure that offers little to no redundancy. These facilities guarantee 99.671% uptime (about 29 hours of downtime per year).
- Tier II: These facilities have partial redundancy in the cooling and electrical systems. As a result, there is 99.749% uptime (about 22 hours of downtime per year).
- Tier III: These facilities have concurrently maintainable site infrastructure and have a 99.982% uptime rating (1.6 hours of downtime annually).
- Tier IV: These are the "4 nines" facilities with 2N+1 redundancy across all infrastructure (completely paralleled backup systems).
Protecting power – South African specific due to our current power challenges:
Outsourcing data control lessens the impact of a power disaster or failure. Technological and natural power outages can wreak havoc on an organisation that is supplying its own power because servers that are kept onsite are prone to more broadband issues. Losing power for as little as 1/50 of a second can trigger events that may keep IT equipment unavailable for as long as 15 minutes to many hours. Onsite power failures are incurable when they result in data loss.
Data centres are also more secure than traditional data storage methods. The problems and risk associated with data loss are intensifying. Today’s storage systems, servers and network devices use components so miniaturised that they falter and fail under power conditions that earlier-generation equipment easily withstood. A data centre provides reliable storage without the glitches of portable technology.
South Africa's data centre market vendor landscape:
Today, there are reportedly more than 7 million data centres worldwide. Practically every business and government entity builds and maintains its own data centre or has access to someone else's, if not both models (hybrid). Many options are available today, such as renting servers at a co-location facility, using data centre services managed by a third party or using public cloud-based services from hosts like Amazon, Microsoft, Sony and Google. Vendors such as Oracle, IBM, Cisco and Dell Technologies have a strong presence in the market. The increasing use of internet facilities is aiding the growth opportunities for the vendors across data centre facilities in South Africa. In 2020, the South Africa data centre market investment was valued at USD 1 316 million. Cloud adoption to grow up to 25% annually in South Africa and generate revenue of up to USD 1.5 billion by 2024.
Maredi Thema is the CEO and founder of Maredi Technologies.
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