Total cost of ownership (TCO) – in Information Technology (IT) is the total cost of the staff and infrastructure to support your business. When crunching numbers to determine the TCO of your IT department, and how that fits into your day to day operations, disaster recovery and business continuity plans, take that one step further to compare those numbers versus colocating your servers in a data center.
Let’s say your business earns $5 million in annual revenues, with very aggressive plans to grow to $6 million. That extra $1 million will be the result of realized growth opportunities and a reduction in expenditures / streamlining your operations.
Most small businesses of this size employ – one or two technicians to manage their servers, desktops, laptops, switches, hubs, printers, phone systems, email, applications, backups, etc. Your annualized investment can easily exceed $300,000. Your business data needs to be communicated internally as well as externally, so the applications and hardware can’t be scaled back, although they may be optimized by upgrading to more efficient services.
This is the scenario thousands of small businesses find themselves in today - only with scaled back growth projections due to the credit crunch. So how could these companies lower their Total Cost of Ownership by colocating their servers in a data center? What do data centers have that aren’t part of their existing IT infrastructure?
Servers colocated in a data center are – normally secured in a cage or rack, with regulated power, dedicated connectivity, layered security and on-site support services 24x7x365. Data centers typically have alarms monitored for fire, smoke and moisture, and power is backed up by a UPS and diesel fuel generator – greatly diminishing any loss of mission critical data due to fire, theft, vandalism or loss of power.
