Much attention in our industry has been given to a recent "rant" by one of the popular financial talk show hosts declaring that "the data center business is dead." His logic was that the new CPU technologies were going to render the need for all this crazy data center space moot.
Well, I want to be the first person in our entire industry to say: OK, I agree with his statements that data center square footage is not going to be on fire like it has been, but he really missed the point. The CPUs aren't the cause; the HyperVisor is the real reason data center space is dead.
GSI is regularly helping clients clean out their corporate data centers with 20-30 cabinets of hardware and putting them into 2-3 cabinets of virtualization and storage gear. Our Matrix Enterprise Virtualization Platform makes that a 100% CapEx free zone, as well. We have already invested the CapEx, so you don't have to.
Now, let's talk about the other item relevant to the concept that "data center space is dead." If you are shopping for data center space, you are REALLY MISSING THE BOAT. What you should be shopping for are the services that your business needs for your IT infrastructure: Storage Services, Computing Services, Management and Monitoring Services, Compliance Services, Backup Services, Messaging Services, Data Archival Services.
I have encountered very few corporate IT teams that can touch the depth of knowledge, certifications, experience, customer satisfaction, and speed to deploy and scale that can be found with a good, qualified managed service provider like GSI. Even when we do come across a VERY competent team, they are constantly fighting cost-control and budgeting issues. And most importantly to the business, none of the corporate IT guys are willing to put their monthly paychecks on the line to stand behind an SLA to the business.
Shouldn't your IT staff be focused on servicing the business's vertical applications and processes, and not patching servers, reading log files, and filling out those darn TPS reports? I see a good analogy here to the wireless industry. You would never consider an insurance company, healthcare provider, or financial services company building their own wireless digital cellular network across the country, hiring teams of people to deploy it, hiring teams of people to operate it, and then dealing with the constant technology upgrades, etc. They let providers like Sprint, Verizon and AT&T do that stuff; they just hand out the Blackberries and iPhones, and everyone starts talking.
Why do insurance companies, healthcare providers, financial services companies, and literally MILLIONS of other businesses think they need to buy a bunch of servers, hire some folks to run them, rehire people to backfill when they have churn in the IT team, etc.? Computing that they can just pass out and use is where they need to be. Quit buying servers, quit buying storage, quit buying data center space. Buy services that your business needs.
Sure, GSI will provide these services in a nice, cool, highly secured data center that meets or exceeds all industry standards. But the actual services are where you need to spend the most time evaluating the real value chain and potential ROI for your business.