In today’s climate, when any unplanned downtime can be catastrophic for a business, you need assurance that your organisation’s data remains secure and accessible, no matter what circumstance. The current Covid-19 pandemic in particular, has brought this issue to the fore, but there are many other unexpected scenarios that could impact your business. In future, it may be an act of terrorism, natural disaster or even another health crisis that causes disruption – one thing is for certain you can’t anticipate everything.
With Covid-19 shining the spotlight on the importance of our infrastructure, you may be considering whether your current strategy still meets your business requirements. You may be hosting on-premise, or collocating in a big London data centre, but whatever your approach, the pandemic has likely highlighted unnecessary infrastructure risks you may no longer be comfortable with taking.
Now’s the time to use the health crisis as a catalyst for a rethink and consider the benefits of moving your infrastructure closer.
Think beyond central hubs
In today’s digital era, you need to ensure your users and customers have rapid and seamless access to data and services. You may be collocating in one of the carrier rich data centres either in or close to London, that offer benefits such as connectivity to hundreds of carriers. However, have you ever taken a step back to look at which of those connections your business is actually using? In reality, you’re probably only using a fraction of what’s available, yet paying a premium for the extra carriers you will never use. And in challenging economic times like those we are operating in today, is this a cost risk you are comfortable with taking?
Similarly, it’s also worth bearing in mind that with major London data centres focused in two major hubs, should a national grid outage occur, all data centres are likely to fail together. And whilst a London data centre can offer benefits in terms of more interconnections, do you need to travel further when you can benefit from the same service you actually need on your doorstep?
Make proximity a priority
Having your data centre nearby makes sense. Shorter distances and less traffic can reduce latency. Plus, you can keep a closer eye on your infrastructure and meet with any third-party representatives face-to-face as needed. Conversely, a poor choice of location can result in unstable connections of inefficiency in data processing.
A local data centre is also desirable for things such as maintenance and upgrades. You know your environment better than anyone else and no doubt want to be able to make any changes to your infrastructure yourself, which is highly impractical if the data centre is at the other end of the country.
There is also the issue of data sovereignty post-Brexit. You need to know exactly where your data is being held and whether your current provider can guarantee it will always remain in the UK.
Looking further forward, as 5G adoption and the use of IoT grows, you may be looking to adopt an edge computing model. Here proximity will become even more important with regional data centres providing an ideal platform for delivering edge services with data sent less regularly to centralised hubs and instead delivered across a grid-like architecture, with lots of data centre locations closer to edge devices.
Remove risk with a regional approach
In order to facilitate digital transformation and accommodate growing data volumes and requirements, more and more organisations are shifting their infrastructure outside of their organisation. However, selecting the right data centre to house the core infrastructure that supports your business is one of the most critical decisions you will make as an IT decision leader.
By hosting your infrastructure with a regional data centre provider like Pulsant, you can take advantage of the same connections and benefits as a London data centre, but at a fraction of the cost.
As a regional provider with a global reach, we are large enough to meet any requirements, but small enough to deliver the bespoke and personalised customer service you require. Our team of experts can help you determine the best location for your business data and applications and if necessary, help you spread your estate across multiple sites if required.
As the largest regional data centre provider in the UK, our sites are strategically located throughout the country in locations such as Reading, Sheffield and Edinburgh, so you can easily and cost-effectively scale up your footprint as your business grows. But most importantly, you can benefit from the peace of mind that your data and infrastructure is never far away, easily accessible and always held in the UK.