Looking for a colocation partner in Europe, and a due diligence checklist to assess if the partner meets current as well as future needs.
This whitepaper explores the criteria that organisations should evaluate - Fulcolo.net
2. Table of Contents
1. . . Does This Sound Like You?
2. . . What Is Colocation
3. . . Europe
4. . . What should you look for
5. . . One size doesn’t always work for all
6. . . Expected ROI
info@fulcolo.net
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3. Colocation Buyers Guide – Europe | WHITEPAPER
Does This Sound
Like You?
Looking for a colocation partner in Europe,
and a due diligence checklist to assess if the
partner meets current as well as future
needs. This whitepaper explores the criteria
that organisations should evaluate. It is
targeted at CIOs, CTOs, IT Directors and
any other person looking for information on
the topic.
info@fulcolo.net
Executive summary
The growth of the digital economy means
Information Technology (IT) is now at the heart of
business. IT has become a business enabler,
fostering the agility and flexibility required for an
organisation to drive innovation and expansion.
For this reason, the infrastructure that supports
IT has become increasingly vital. To achieve the
highly
secure
and
resilient
colocation
environments that are necessary to meet these
modern
business
requirements,
many
organisations are outsourcing all or part of their
technical, web and IT infrastructure to expert
third-party data centre providers.
When choosing a colocation partner in
Europe, it is important to find a company
you can trust that offers a secure and
reliable environment for your businesscritical infrastructure. They must be able to
provide a network located in primary
positions for connectivity and power, as well
as expansion plans to meets your on-going
business growth requirements. In addition
they must have stability to support this
type of growth.
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4. Colocation Buyers Guide – Europe | WHITEPAPER
Co-location, where companies hire data centre space
from a service provider, is a popular trend, with colocation companies and big data centres being setting
up across the globe to provide IT as a fourth utility. The
growing question now is why would enterprises invest in
their own IT equipment when they can just tap into colocation data centres and get a provisioned service for a
much lower cost. Co-location makes managing the data
far simpler for companies, as they do not need to spend
their IT budget on maintaining the data centre and
hiring staff to look after it.
“The best way to think about it is businesses like
Amazon, where they get huge amounts of
demand at certain times of the year like
Christmas and then they need to flex up in a
huge way, but they don’t want to have this
capacity all year round so if you outsource or
lease it then obviously you can take more
bandwidth at critical times of the year when your
customers are going to require more capacity,”
info@fulcolo.net
Modular Datacenter
What is
Colocation ?
TO
LET
Mail: sales@fulcolo.net
Business benefits of co-location
The business benefit is the cost, both on the capital
investment side and the operating expenditure side because
enterprises do not have to invest in the equipment
themselves; they are paying on a usage basis. On the OPEX
side enterprises don’t have to have teams permanently
employed to manage the data centre.
Improve Reliability & Availability
Improve Efficiency & Performance
Reduce and Eliminate Costs
Scalable
Reduce Risk
Meet Compliance Needs
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5. Colocation Buyers Guide – Europe | WHITEPAPER
With 28 Member States and a population of nearly 500
million Europeans (compared to 300 million Americans),
the European Union (EU) spans a large part of the
European continent. The sheer size of this potential client
base therefore offers a unique opportunity for developing
new markets.
The EU has established a single market across the
territory of all its members. 17 member states have also
joined a monetary union known as the euro zone, which
uses the Euro as a single currency. In 2012 the EU had a
combined GDP of 16.073 trillions international dollars, a
20% share of the global gross domestic product (in terms
of purchasing power parity). According to Credit Suisse
Global Wealth Report 2012 (September), the EU owns the
largest net wealth in the world; it is estimated to equal
30% of the $223 trillion global wealth.
It is committed to promoting economic prosperity and
creating jobs, by offering an environment that favours
competitiveness between companies resulting in better
skilled workers and attractive prices to consumers.
In addition to being a growing political entity, the EU is
first and foremost a free trade area, meaning that its
members have agreed to eliminate tariffs, quotas and
preferences on all the goods and services traded between
them. As a result, trade between EU member States
represents two thirds of all EU trade, with varying levels
between countries.
Companies should look for colocation
partners that can demonstrate expansion
plans in the key European hubs, providing
the assurance that their growth plans can
be accommodated into the future with
premium data centre capacity.
info@fulcolo.net
EUROPE
KNOWS YOUR
CULTURE
AND SPEAKS
YOUR LANGUAGE
All over the EU, more and more firms and households are
connected to the internet, and more business is being
done online — which both reduces costs and boosts
efficiency. By 2011, 71% of households and most
businesses in the EU had access to the web. Additionally
33% of EU businesses were buying and 21% were selling
online — the market is clearly far from saturated.
Network independent data centre
capacity in the city centres of Europe’s
financial and digital hubs is the most
effective choice for enterprises looking
for a resilient, highly-connected
infrastructure to supports today’s
bandwidth-heavy digital economy.
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6. Colocation Buyers Guide – Europe | WHITEPAPER
What should you look
for in a European
colocation provider?
Connectivity
The data centre should act as thriving, connected, digital
ecosystem with direct access to international and local
fixed line, broadband and mobile networks, internet
exchange points, content distribution networks, trading
platforms and cloud hubs. These hubs will facilitate the
secure storage, sharing, and distribution of mission
critical applications, data, content and media.
Connectivity
Flexibility
Flexibility
Energy efficiency
Security
Energy efficiency
Flexibility from your colocation partner is vital. From
choosing your location in the data centre to selecting the
power, services and support levels you require, the
solution must meet the business’ evolving needs.
The rising cost of power and the growing focus on
corporate carbon emissions from the EU and national
governments is putting increasing pressure on
organisations to demonstrate energy efficiency. This has
caused energy efficiency to become one of the key
outsourcing considerations, and it is now a differentiator
when organisations are choosing a third party data
centre supplier.
Security
In today’s global economy, cybercrime is becoming a
real threat to commercial security, with many attacks
perpetrated by organised criminals who have the
resources to pay for high levels of hacking expertise.
Indeed, a recent study estimated the global cost of
cybercrime for businesses at $114 billion annually.
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7. Colocation Buyers Guide – Europe | WHITEPAPER
According to Info-Tech Research Group, 64% of
organizations engage in some form of datacenter
colocation services. In addition, Gartner has
observed more and more enterprises enlisting
colocation services, and the research firm has
identified several reasons behind this trend.*
64% of
Organizations
Engage in Some
Form of Data Center
Colocation Services
*Source: Focus Research Group Colocation Services Buyers Guide
1
2
3
Traditional office buildings don’t always meet
the cooling, power and weight requirements to
house dense and heavy hardware, and
retrofitting them is too expensive. Also, these
buildings rarely allow for the lockdown security
measures that companies want for their server
rooms.
Colocation
gives
companies
that
are
consolidating or outgrowing their internal
datacenters a cost effective alternative to
building new facilities.
4
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Because organizations are more
geographically distributed, they
don’t necessarily have an optimal
central location in which to locate
a datacenter and Web systems.
And, finally, remote ―lights-out‖
management technology makes
administering remote systems
easier, allowing IT staffers to
even reboot servers remotely.
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8. Colocation Buyers Guide – Europe | WHITEPAPER
One Solution
Doesn’t Always
Work For All
Colocation – Not A Rocket Science
Choosing a colocation provider is a strategic business
decision that evolves from thoughtful consideration. It is
important to know what to look for and the right
questions to ask.
Outsourcing
the
responsibilities
of
your
IT
Infrastructure with colocation can provide the
traditional benefits of lowering costs and re-directing
resources; however, like many organizations, you
may be asking, ―Is it a fit for me?― To make an
informed decision, TALK TO US
Five 9’s?
Three 9’s?
What’s the
Difference?
Availability is usually
expressed as a percentage
of uptime in a given year.
Many providers will state
their availability as
percentage such as 99.999
or 99.9. The difference?
Two fewer nines means an
average of 86 seconds
more downtime every day,
or 43 minutes more
downtime every month.
64% of organizations engaged in a colocation
agreement have a dedicated vendor resource
responsible for managing their services.
55% of organizations that established a shopping
list of services aligned with their business needs
were more likely to experience colocation success.
*Source: Info-Tech
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9. Colocation Buyers Guide – Europe | WHITEPAPER
Expected ROI
More than 200 CEOs, business owners and IT
decision makers were surveyed on their
expected ROI timeline for a colocation solution.
Read on to find out when they believe colocation
will pay off for their business.
Colocation due diligence
check-list
Consultative, customer-centric approach
Experienced people
of CEOs,
Business
owners
and IT
decision
makers
expect to
see a
return on
investment
from their
colocation
solution
info@fulcolo.net
Premium standards and engineering excellence
70%
Focus on customer service and delivery
Capacity for growth & ongoing investment
Choice of connectivity
24%
expected a
return
within six
months
Connectivity and support services
29%
Within two
years
Pan-European presence in key cities
Value for money
Environmental leadership
40%
Financial stability
Within twelve
months
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10. A New Rating System For Data Centres | WHITEPAPER
Who we are
Fulcolo.net provides small, mid-size and enterprises flexible IT infrastructure solutions with its Modular
and Virtual Datacenters. Fulcolo.net’s customer approach leads to innovative solutions that offer
unprecedented visibility and control, helping customers make better decisions about risk, agility and
operational efficiency. Fulcolo.net, a service provided by Fulcrum IT Service Pvt Ltd, facilitates a hybrid
cloud approach for IT departments and business units seeking choice, platform compatibility and a cloud
partner that focuses customer’s unique infrastructure needs.
Call: +91 269 2252888
®
email: info@fulcrum.in.net
skype: fulcolo.net
Fulcrum IT Services Pvt Ltd ®, Alpnani Building, Anand, Gujarat, INDIA – 388001. All rights reserved. Fulcolo.net and Fulcrum IT Services are registered trademark of Fulcrum IT Services Pvt Ltd in
India and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies
