Data centers for next-generation IT: Build vs. buy

Executive Summary

Today, organizations are more reliant than ever on technology to drive business imperatives and opportunities. IT departments must deploy modern infrastructure that supports critical initiatives such as cloud computing, big data, mobility, collaboration tools and social media. However, in many cases, IT leaders are recognizing that existing data centers may not be suitable for this new era in IT.

Technology is changing rapidly and aging data centers have a difficult time dealing with the demands of today’s IT environments in terms of capacity, security, scalability, agility, compliance, redundancy, costs, and power/cooling. What’s more, management platforms such as software-defined and converged models are pressing IT leaders to re-evaluate how they deploy data centers.

For many organizations, when it comes to data centers the time to act is now. However, new data center construction is risky. Building is expensive and time consuming at a time when IT needs to move quickly and stay within tight budget constraints. In the face of these changes, organizations are also presented the opportunity to put in place a new foundation that will scale properly to meet strong demand and address today’s rigorous requirements.

What should that foundation look like? Does it make sense to build new data centers, expand existing ones, outsource to a colocation provider, or use a combination of approaches?

There are cases to be made for building and buying (“leasing”). Leasing a data center provides an attractive opex model, the ability to quickly scale up and down, access to the provider’s space and power, and staffing for 24-hour security and support. However, many enterprises are still deploying internal data centers because of concerns around security and compliance. Plus, building can provide more control. 

What to do?

In this white paper, you can examine the critical factors that go into the “build vs. buy” decision for data centers and explore why today’s challenges and opportunities are causing a clear shift toward the “buy” side of the equation.