Is Your Corporate Data Center Comatose? by J Schler

The trend to lease data center space with a colocation provider instead of building your own in-house corporate data center facility isn't new; however, the reasons to make the move continue to gather speed. Drivers such as reduced costs, improved efficiencies, aging workforces, increased compliance needs and more attractive opex models continue to top the list. In a recent Uptime Institute 2014 Data Center Industry Survey, colocation operators cited growth in their budgeting forecasts while in-house enterprise data center respondents reported declines. This caused the Institute to conclude that enterprise data center workloads are steadily shifting to third-party providers.

The study goes on to cite other trends such as the preference for colocation and cloud over in-house corporate data center deployments. But, there's an important aspect of data center operations that is not getting the attention it deserves. In this same survey, the Institute asks enterprises where their servers are-citing a mismatch between what senior executives think (good) and the reality (bad). The results are surprising.

Forty-three percent of companies surveyed had no method for auditing their either non-functioning or underutilized hardware creating an army of stranded comatose servers.

While colocation and private cloud provide improved efficiency and reliability - it makes it harder to track these comatose servers, creating an out of sight, out of mind situation as outlined below.

*Source: Uptime Institute 2014 Data Center Industry Survey

Do you know where your servers and data sit? At Iron Mountain, we do with our RFID-based Compliant Asset Tracking Service (CATS). With Iron Mountain you have full real time visibility into all assets with CATS, and the peace of mind knowing exactly how many of your assets are deployed as well as their power usage. This gives you the ability to decommission your comatose servers efficiently and securely.

We'd love to hear from you and talk further about your inventory and colocation needs. Feel free to contact us for additional information, or simply visit www.ironmountain.com/datacenters.

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2015/uncategorized/corporate-data-center...
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