Colocation could increase your costs by up to 20 per cent says St Andrews University CIO

Business case is all

Colocated data centres could increase your costs by 15 - 20 per cent, according to St Andrews University CIO Steve Watt, who was spreaking during a panel debate at Computing's Data Centre and Infrastructure Summit 2015 this morning.

Watt admitted that, while the university was privileged to be connected to the high-speed data network for educational institutions, Janet, when working with in-house data centre facilities, his experience of using outsourced colocation was still a considerable bump in cost.

"[The] promise is a 15 to 20 per cent increase in costs," he revealed. But he also believes you get what you pay for - depending on business case.

"You're not comparing apples to apples, you're paying for a greater service than you might be able to provide yourself," he continued.

Watt revealed that, in the end, St Andrews found that a move into SaaS services - namely Microsoft Office 365 - was better for the university's budget and use case than a colo data centre hosting and continuing to run their own email services.

"Office 365 is a no-brainer when looking at collaboration. So that model is definitely a cost-saving model," he said.

In terms of advice for delegates, Watt suggested involving the board at the earliest levels of data centre strategy.

"First, identify what the business is trying to do. When going through this at the board level, you need to ask, ‘Are we going to continue to have [a data centre], and what is the risk you're getting into, and how do you mitigate it?'"

Ben Naylor, regional IT technology manager at glass repair firm Belron International, agreed that forward planning due to business case is key in terms of buying into solutions that are of genuine value, rather than just industry trends.

"It's a big one for us in terms of a shift of our strategy," said Naylor.

"[We move] ourselves as early as possible in terms of understanding our customers' business requirements," said Naylor.

"It's hugely important when trying to understand the advice we want to give customers."

Given that Belron operates in 34 countries, regional differences are a key consideration for Naylor.

"In Germany, [transferring data between countries] is dependent on agreements with insurance providers. To understand exactly what the business needs is key when going through the selection process," explained Naylor.

"So the technology itself is something we look at afterwards - the key point is understanding business requirements."