How much is too much? It’s hard to say — especially with data centres. It’s a subject that has troubled ClOs who have over-provisioned in the face of soaring business demands and need to cut costs at the same time.

More and more frequently, the balancing act brings ClOs to one question: should they build and maintain their own data centres or let others run it to help manage costs and enable growth?

The current slowdown is pushing more ClOs towards an outsourcing strategy. By turning to managed hosting services, ClOs hope to curb capital and operational costs and help make their organizations more agile to changing market scenarios. It’s a trend that Forrester’s principal analyst Bill Martorelli is monitoring. “The popularity of managed hosting will likely increase because of current economic pressures,” he says.

Galen Schreck, principal analyst, Forrester Research agrees. “If you needed more office space, would you build an office from ground up or would you look for a larger, more modern office building to lease? A new data centre represents the same kind of choice, and increasingly it makes more sense to lease data centre space.”

Run data centre run

Managing your own data centre means creating big pools of job roles at the expense of organisational agility – and a continuous stream of cost to maintain both human and technological resources.

Hiring a provider also makes sense from a power perspective. Customers under capital spending constraints will find upgrading their own data centres for higher power needs hard to justify. With its limited requirement for upfront capital investment, managed hosting can help relieve these concerns.

Value Adds

Infrastructure outsourcing can offer businesses a ‘no-worry’ scenario with focus on scalability and manageability.

CIOs should look at building a datacenter themselves only if it gives their organisations an edge over their competitors. But if there is something available outside and can be tweaked to meet your requirements, you should look at an outsourced model. It gives scalability on demand. Outsourcing your infrastructure also gives access to two more benefits: governance and superior skill sets. Because service providers need to adhere to SLAs, their processes and governance tend to be very strong.

More often than not, an in-house IT team will dispense with these formalities and proper documentation to save time.

This lack of governance at lower levels could have larger consequences later on. Also organisations don’t always get the best resources. Vendors, who provide solutions to multiple clients, can afford experts and companies can get these experts at a good price by letting a service provider manage your data centre. These benefits, say Martorelli, are beginning to foster new interest in the infrastructure model. “The growing scope and versatility of services will appeal to more buyers. Service providers are boosting the appeal of managed services with offerings based on customer-dedicated infrastructure. And customer interest is picking up,” he says.