Datacentres face strangulation

In the report entitled Creating Cost and Energy Efficiency Through Outsourcing Hosting Solutions, IDC states that about 50 percent of companies host their websites and ebusiness infrastructure themselves, using their own facilities.

But pressures are rising that will upset this status quo. These include the rising costs of power and cooling, the growing imperative of green IT - not mentioned in the Gartner analysis, and the gradual shift of costs such as power from facilities departments to IT organisations within companies.

The hosting industry is maturing and consolidating and hosting specialists have emerged in the middle market that offer high-quality capabilities and service at realistic prices. IDC concludes that three things will help make green outsourced hosting companies attractive:

1.Save money: Most organisations will see a benefit in terms of capital and operational expenditure and risk management by switching from in-house hosting to a managed hosting service. In all but the most specialised circumstances, IDC recommends evaluating a managed hosting service for at least non-core infrastructure.

2. Support the environment: IDC believes that organisations of all sizes should give consideration, today, to the environmental aspect of their IT operations. Among many actions that companies can take themselves is to use a managed hosting provider with a defined environmental strategy. (Enter Rackspace.) The economies of scale that a hosting provider can exploit, such as sharing infrastructure across customers and reducing power consumption per server, will result in reduced wastage and environmental impact.

3. Deal with IT paying for datacentre energy costs: IDC thinks that concerns over energy security are likely to drive higher energy prices and price volatility, all related to the cost of powering a datacentre. The responsibility of datacentre power expense is increasingly being transferred from facilities departments to the IT manager in order to drive closer integration. In some cases, shifting the responsibility for power costs has consumed an organisation's entire annual IT budget.

This additional pressure will force IT managers to look at alternative operating models, such as outsourcing the hosting operation. In addition, a specialist hosting provider will be able to secure more favourable terms with infrastructure and energy suppliers than most companies can achieve themselves, thereby reducing cost.