Event Recap
RECAP | ROUNDTABLE | Selecting a Colocation Facility
Uptime Institute’s December 10th Inside Track Roundtable included participants having a wide variety of experience operating in colocation environments, with several working in operations for colocation and hosting providers.
These perspectives gave the discussion a unique quality, as end-users shared their processes for moving IT loads to colocation facilities. Eric Maddison, Uptime Institute senior consultant, added broad industry background to the discussion, drawing from his experiences developing IT plans and evaluating mission-critical facilities.
Roundtable participants generally agreed that selecting a colocation facility required a deep examination of a colocation site and operator to ensure that they met the organization’s business requirements. The number of relevant items could easily exceed 100 separate items. These included physical requirements, resiliency, latency and cost, weighted according to the demands and needs of the enterprise.
Session moderator Kevin Heslin asked what modern conditions would motivate an enterprise to move IT loads to a colocation. While many of the participants mentioned capacity planning, others suggested that changing IT requirements, aging infrastructure and increased flexibility and offerings also could cause an organization to examine its alternatives.
The participants tended to agree that lengthy procurement processes and detailed checklists could be inefficient, with one participant warning that desirable space could become unavailable during the evaluation process. Maddison and others noted that developing a detailed understanding of an organization’s capacity requirements, including what kinds of equipment would be deployed, is a critical first step to developing meaningful RFPs. This, Maddison noted, was similar to the requirements for maintaining and operating on-premises IT.
Several participants noted that moving to a colocation location could be complex, advising others to take advantage of readily available expertise, including specialized site selection and real estate firms. These organizations can help a firm identify its true needs and develop a process for identifying an appropriate site and colocation operator.
Two firms, both financials, noted that new products and technologies, enabled by cloud or even service providers, had complicated their IT and business requirements. These changes, they noted, included a need for low latency, with one saying that latency for certain mainframe applications required geographic proximity. In these instances, a multiple site strategy involving multiple colocation providers might be the best way forward, adding even greater complexity to the site selection process.
These perspectives gave the discussion a unique quality, as end-users shared their processes for moving IT loads to colocation facilities. Eric Maddison, Uptime Institute senior consultant, added broad industry background to the discussion, drawing from his experiences developing IT plans and evaluating mission-critical facilities.
Roundtable participants generally agreed that selecting a colocation facility required a deep examination of a colocation site and operator to ensure that they met the organization’s business requirements. The number of relevant items could easily exceed 100 separate items. These included physical requirements, resiliency, latency and cost, weighted according to the demands and needs of the enterprise.
Session moderator Kevin Heslin asked what modern conditions would motivate an enterprise to move IT loads to a colocation. While many of the participants mentioned capacity planning, others suggested that changing IT requirements, aging infrastructure and increased flexibility and offerings also could cause an organization to examine its alternatives.
The participants tended to agree that lengthy procurement processes and detailed checklists could be inefficient, with one participant warning that desirable space could become unavailable during the evaluation process. Maddison and others noted that developing a detailed understanding of an organization’s capacity requirements, including what kinds of equipment would be deployed, is a critical first step to developing meaningful RFPs. This, Maddison noted, was similar to the requirements for maintaining and operating on-premises IT.
Several participants noted that moving to a colocation location could be complex, advising others to take advantage of readily available expertise, including specialized site selection and real estate firms. These organizations can help a firm identify its true needs and develop a process for identifying an appropriate site and colocation operator.
Two firms, both financials, noted that new products and technologies, enabled by cloud or even service providers, had complicated their IT and business requirements. These changes, they noted, included a need for low latency, with one saying that latency for certain mainframe applications required geographic proximity. In these instances, a multiple site strategy involving multiple colocation providers might be the best way forward, adding even greater complexity to the site selection process.
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