Outsourcing of data centers to third parties will see double-digit growth in Europe this year, according to Gartner VP of Research Scott Morrison.
Europe’s drive to outsource is being driven by the age of many company data centers, as well as corporate desire to restructure IT infrastructures and eliminate “data-center sprawl,” he explains in a recent interview with Accela Communications’ IT Briefing Center. Focus of many companies’ outsourcing includes their mission-critical IT services and business-critical applications.
“Many IT leaders make the decision that it’s beyond the scope of the internal IT organization to provide the required level of guarantee back to the business,” he said. “They’re thus drawn to the service-provider model on the basis of the better overall service levels being offered.”
Companies looking to outsource their data centers remain focused on two key metrics: cost reduction and performance improvement, he says.
“While we’ve seen many parts of the network and IT services market start to contract during this economic downturn, demand for third-party data centers is actually growing faster as a result,” Morrison adds. “And Gartner expects to see double-digit rises in demand in Europe this year, continuing the trend we’ve seen in the past three to four years.”
When you look at system downtime, the math is pretty simple, but disturbing. According to recent statistics compiled by International Data Corporation (IDC), each year the average midsize company has between 16 and 20 hours of network, system, or application downtime.
IDC also determined that revenue losses per hour averaged about $70,000. So, these midsize companies are losing about $1.4 million a year in unanticipated downtime.
“Causes of downtime vary, but aging systems can have components or software that fails, while networking links and power grids can fail at any time because of external causes, such as weather, construction work, or natural disaster,” according to IDC. “Outages occurring during business hours result in revenue loss, as orders are dropped, customers move on, and employees cannot access critical applications.”
Two articles about scalability issues in the Cloud came out the same day in Data Center Knowledge. One about Rackspace and the other about Amazon — companies running two of the biggest thunderheads in the “sky.” While Amazon said, “We do not have over-capacity issues,” Rackspace fessed up and said, “We have not been able to fully identify the root cause of these unusual issues.”
I’m wondering if smaller cloud clusters might ultimately be more practical. Although they might not realize the economics of scale found in the bigger cloud formations, it seems like the scalability and reliability issues would be less complex.
The debate over the adequacy of broadband in the United States — compared, at least, to parts of Europe and Asia — has centered on speed and numbers of users. In some cases, the US hasn’t stacked up too well. But when actual broadband use is measured, the US comes out much better. “There’s this argument about whether the broadband networks in the U.S. are good enough,” Jonathan Banks, senior vice president of law and policy at USTelecom, told IDG Connect. “A lot of people compare network capacity to Europe or Japan. You may have a lot of capacity, but if people don’t use it, what does it mean?”
According to IDG, USTelecom looked at broadband use in North America, Europe and Asia, and found average U.S. consumers transfer about 14.2 gigabytes worth of Web content to their Internet devices a month. South Koreans were by far the greatest users of bandwidth per month, at 24.5GBs, followed by France, at 14.3GBs, and then the US. Germans averaged 12.9GBs per month, Brits averaged 11.9GBs, and the Japanese averaged just 9.9GBs.
“The average broadband connection worldwide generates 11.4GBs of Internet traffic per month, or 375 megabytes per day, according to the Cisco Visual Networking Index, upon which the USTelecom study is based,” IDG reports. “The average broadband user, then, generates traffic about equal to downloading 3,000 text e-mails per day or 100 MP3 music files per day.”
EasyStreet is proud to announce announced the successful completion of our SAS 70 Type II audit.
Why is this important to EasyStreet customers?
Today, companies need to be assured that their service providers have implemented controls over security, information technology and related business processes. This SAS 70 audit means that an expert CPA firm has evaluated and tested the internal controls governing EasyStreet’s colocation facilities — and has verified that they have operated effectively over time.
Obviously, this is an important accomplishment for EasyStreet, but it also has benefits for companies who choose to co-locate at our data center. By extension, our SAS 70 audit lets you:
- Address compliance regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, FDA 21 CFR Part 11 or the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
- Save the cost of doing your own audits. For example, sharing a copy of the SAS 70 report from EasyStreet with your PCI or CISP provider can often reduce your costs for those audits.
- Ensure your SaaS offering has a strong system of internal controls for safeguarding sensitive data.
- Create a strategic advantage by using a SAS 70 audited provider. (Having an audited data center may be required for you to win clients in certain regulated industries.)
- Trust in the critical components of your IT infrastructure, such as security, redundancy and reliability.
Our President and CEO, Rich Bader, said, “This is a critical milestone in EasyStreet’s evolution. I knew our processes, people and internal controls were sound, and we now have third-party verification to further instill confidence in our services. I’m proud — but not surprised — that we were able to pass on our first audit.”
EasyStreet’s SAS 70 audit was conducted by Linford & Company LLP of Denver, Colorado.
For more information, read EasyStreet’s SAS 70 FAQ page here.
Informative articles about why SAS 70 is important can be found at TechNewsWorld and Online Tech Blog.
