January 03, 2023
Operators of data centers and facility managers typically oversee a growing computing footprint, whether they’re employed by enterprises, industry organizations, colocation or managed services providers, or telecommunications firms. These IT leaders are seeking to enable growth, maintain continuous availability of compute and storage resources, and optimize key operations all goals external service providers can help them achieve.
Data center and facility leaders have a number of options when it comes to using outside services. They can outsource everything, using managed and colocation services, so that they can focus on business growth rather than IT management. Or these IT leaders can insource everything, operating data centers as a competency. This is the realm of hyperscale data center operators, who perfect every aspect of data center operations to manage vast facilities and global networks at scale. Or finally, IT leaders can tap their internal teams and a group of trusted external partners and vendors to plan, build, run, optimize, and grow their IT footprint. By so doing, data center teams can focus on strategic management, leaving key operational duties to their partners.
Most enterprise and small - to mid-size colocation organizations will likely choose the last approach to handling their IT network needs. In this scenario, an IT team manages part or all of the corporate network, while leveraging external resources to provide targeted expertise and services that extend their reach and ensure high availability and performance for data centers. For example, this IT team could work with partners to plan and commission a new facility; provide ongoing preventive maintenance services; upgrade and replace aging equipment; and gain ongoing monitoring, repair, and troubleshooting services.