They were supposed to be extinct by now, but data centers are actually thriving.
Last month, some of the world’s largest server, networking and infrastructure companies ann-ounced a host of new technologies that were meant to streamline data center operations. That’s right, data center.
Weren’t data centers supposed to be ‘lights out’ by now? Over the years, the cost of servers, networking and storage went into a dizzying downward spiral, logically making data centers obsolete by now, victims of affordable, shoebox-sized end-user technology. Why then does the Internet data center continue to live on and even flourish?
Data center 2.0 for Web 2.0
When Exodus Communications, the global big-daddy of data centers in the dotcom era, was eventually sold in bankruptcy court to Cable & Wireless in 2001, they had more than 44 data centers around the world-millions of square-feet of prime raised-floor real estate with not enough customers. The dotcom crash of 2000-01 hurt the data center industry badly, with Exodus being just one of the casualties.
Six years later, with the advent of the much-touted Web 2.0, data centers have seen a gradual, sensible revival of the dotcom industry. Online enterprises with sustainable and scalable business models are fueling data center growth. Rich-media streaming content delivery websites and online stores like Metacafe, CNN, YouTube and iTunes deliver rich media to millions of users around the world everyday. To do this they need the resources that only a data center can offer them like mass data storage, teraflops of processing power, and high-speed networks. Why would these organizations invest millions of dollars in building data centers when they could outsource their hosting for a fraction of the cost?
The benefits of outsourcing are many, so companies find it far cheaper to host their mission-critical online applications with a quality data center than to do it in-house.
Going, going, gone
The cost of building a quality data center is astronomical. In 2006, Equinix is reported to have spent $165 million to convert a Chicago warehouse into a data center, while Microsoft was said to be shopping around in Texas for a massive server farm. Estimated cost? $600 million. In contrast, less than three years ago, data centers were available for a song thanks to a glut of for-sale facilities built by failed dotcoms and telcos such as Exodus, AboveNet and WorldCom. Those sites have already been bought amid surging demand for hosting and data storage. So if companies need data center space, they must either build them from scratch or move their servers to a quality Internet data center that will allow them to scale their server and network infrastructure with virtually no fuss or capital investment.
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