Trends in data centre outsourcing

SUDIPTA SEN examines the reasons for outsourcing a data centre, what constitutes good data centre infrastructure, and how service providers are gearing up to surpass customer expectations

TO ANALYZE the trend towards data centre outsourcing, let us consider the key question-why are enterprises looking to outsource their IT infrastructure, and data centres in particular? While answers from CIOs would vary in tune with their IT requirements, some of the key decision influencers are:

* Total cost of ownership. IT infrastructures are getting increasingly complex, and running an in-house data centre would involve continued investments in engineers, servers, patches, technology upgradation, real estate maintenance, multi-channel connectivity options, etc. Compare this to the substantially lower annual cost which service providers charge for maintaining the same IT infrastructure.

* Focus on core competencies. For most companies, IT is the driver of business, but not the business itself. They would rather invest their resources in improving their business than worrying about their data centres.

* Get better service. By outsourcing data centre activities, enterprises can look forward to a higher standard of service and product enhancement than they would get in-house. Tight service level agreements ensure that a high level of service is a contractual obligation.

* Access to better skill sets. A service provider has years of learning in managing data centres. Enterprises would rather benefit from the learning than try and reinvent the wheel.

* Stable IT environment. Service providers have people and processes in place to face any eventuality; this should ensure a stable environment. They often offer the flexibility to

scale up or down as per client requirements, so you pay only for what you use.

Outsourcing the data centre would result in reducing the total cost of ownership. However, care must be taken to ensure that the most critical resources are with a trusted service provider. It is important to understand that a data centre is not about real estate; it's about the management skill-sets, the various infrastructure management services, and what value-added services the outsourcing partner is willing to offer. The key reason why enterprises outsource the data centre is to ensure 24/7 availability of business-critical applications.

Questions to ask

Now that the benefits are established, enterprises should look for a quality service provider who can address their requirements. They should ask questions such as (i) What am I getting other than the physical racks to host the server? (ii) Do they have the necessary resources to manage it? (iii) How many shifts do they work? (iv) Do they have a 24/7

help desk service? (v) What kind of infrastructure support would they offer?

A data centre is not an island and cannot exist in isolation. Enterprises should look at the robustness of the infrastructure before deciding to outsource. It is important to identify if there are any 'single points of failure.' Most of the quality service providers will have redundant connectivity options with multiple basic operators terminating their fibre in the data centre. In addition, SPs would have option of multiple media such as VSATs, terrestrial and wireless. Enterprises should also look at the power back-up facility, quality of gensets, fire suppression facility, air conditioning, data centre accessibility, etc.

The quality of infrastructure support is of paramount importance. Service providers today invest a lot in putting up an extremely good infrastructure with proper power back-up systems, FM200-based fire suppression facilities, precision air-conditioning to maintain constant temperature, and biometrics and surveillance cameras to ensure that the client's critical applications and data are hosted and managed in the best possible way. A good way to knowing about the quality of the data centre is to check for any international certifications or accreditations such as SunTone, ISO or BS 7799.

Lots of companies are not comfortable with the idea of letting a service provider manage their key IT resources. They fear that sensitive data may leak into a competitor's hands, or they doubt the competency of the service provider. These concerns are addressable by following proper processes. Let's look at some of the key concerns and how service providers are geared to address them.

Taking care of security

The first and foremost cause of concern is security. Security not only in terms of the physical well-being of the server and other critical resources, but also in terms of protection of data, regular back-ups, etc. While the concern is understandable, service providers today have built processes to eliminate such concerns. Good quality service providers now deploy security checks at both the physical and network level.

Physical security is taken care of by deploying biometrics, multi-point surveillance cameras, and server cage and mantraps. A biometrics system scans the fingerprints of the person trying to enter the data centre. Since fingerprints cannot be duplicated, only authorised personnel can access the resources. Biometrics is supplemented by multiple-point surveillance cameras which are positioned strategically and record all proceedings. The recordings are archived so that in case of any sabotage the tapes can be revisited. Further, server racks are placed under lock and key, and are like cages. One key remains with the client and the other with the service provider, which ensures that the service provider's engineers physically access the servers only in the presence of the client's representative.

In today's age, abuse happens not only through physical proximity to the resources but also through the network. Good service providers offer solutions which allow clients to open their resources to mobile stakeholders and at the same time minimise the chances of abuse. One of the key solutions is double factor authentication, which ensures that access to critical resources is provided only to authorised people. In this, when remote users enter their access code, a challenge is sent on their physical token (which could be a mobile, pager, PDA, etc), and only when the challenge is fed into the system is access is provided. Somebody may hack into the access code; however, it is unlikely that they would have access to (for example) their mobiles phones too. Good service providers also deploy proper firewalls/IDS systems which can detect and restrict any unwanted advances to critical resources. Since firewalls change at break-neck speed, service providers are in a much better position than an in-house IT team to update their systems on a regular basis.

Other concerns of clients are quality of infrastructure, quality of people, skill-sets available, etc. Service providers take care of such concerns by hiring people with international certifications such as CCNA and MCSP.

DR’s Next

Service providers have gone one step forward and are today not only servicing IT infrastructure but also creating disaster recovery (DR) sites. These sites ensure that even if there is downtime with the primary server, the entire infrastructure would converge to an alternate site. Thus, if the primary servers and applications are in a data centre in Delhi, the same can be replicated to an alternate data centre in Mumbai. If the data centre in Delhi goes down because of any disaster, the network immediately switches to the back-up site in the Mumbai data centre, thus ensuring 24x7 availability and access to business-critical applications. These facilities, when outsourced to a service provider, cost a fraction of the huge capital and operating expenses that would be incurred by enterprises if built in-house.

The key here is trust

Enterprises must trust their service providers the way they trust their doctors or their chartered accountants. A disgruntled employee can abuse an in-house data centre. There have been numerous instances of employees leaving with a lot of critical company data. It is therefore a question of how much you trust your outsourcing partner. It is to be noted that service providers are as much concerned about the health of the resources as enterprises' are, because taking care of clients' IT infrastructure is their primary business.

The trend towards outsourcing data centres will grow substantially in future as IT infrastructure grows increasingly complex. Service providers realise it's not just about hosting servers, and hence have built capabilities to not only host the servers but also provide multi-channel connectivity to it, incorporate multi-level security, and create an environment which surpasses a client's expectations.

Sudipta Sen is managing director, Comsat Max. He may be contacted at sudipta.sen@comsatmax.com