Breaking Down Walls – How Changing Data Center Models Transform Business

The data center without walls movement has taken hold in the enterprise, creating a situation in which organizations can freely mix and match diverse technology services to drive value creation. In particular, being able to subscribe to cloud technologies, colocation services and similar hosted data center solutions lets companies move to an operating cost model for many of their IT systems. The result is a situation in which raising large amounts of capital are no longer necessary in innovation.

Unpacking the data center without walls
Businesses have relied almost exclusively on internal data center assets for a long time. For smaller companies, this meant having to limit their ability to leverage technology because of their budget limitations. For large organizations, this meant having to build out large data centers that could host all of their systems and support customer needs. Being able to break beyond the traditional data center walls lets companies innovate without the cost or construction commitments that went with traditional facility setups. New services that are tearing these walls down include:

Cloud services
Software, infrastructure and platform services allow companies to use third-party system resources to access applications, store data, develop apps and complete similar operations. Mixing public, private and hosted private cloud services lets organizations maintain internal data center assets in a private cloud for extremely sensitive data – regardless of whether it is sensitive for performance or security reasons. At the same time, public and hosted private cloud systems let companies leverage third-party expertise and resources in places where cost and performance requirements make the strategy appropriate.

Colocation
For a service that was once associated with legacy data center models, colocation has evolved to become invaluable in a cloud-centric world. At its simplest, colocation is a service in which companies lease data center space to house their systems. This eliminates the facility challenges – and costs – associated with running a data center. However, what makes colocation especially valuable is that facilities tend to be located with prime access to network resources. This results in a robust WAN services that are ideal for cloud workflows.

As companies incorporate a combination of cloud and internal data center resources, colocation facilities can serve as hubs for hosted private clouds and other data center systems. The network capabilities offered by colocation facilities makes them ideal for this multi-location data center ecosystem.

Taking advantage of a data center without walls
In the past, organizations have had to build their workflows based on what their data center can handle. With cloud, colocation and similar services in place, organizations can choose their data center model based on their business requirements.

This is where managed services providers offering cloud migration services become so valuable. The combination of consulting, technology partnerships and service options offered by MSPs allow them to provide end-to-end assistance as businesses work to build their own data centers without walls. Aligning IT and business capabilities is more important than ever, and evolving data center models help companies drive value through IT innovation.