Data-Centre Hosting Services: Considering the Co-Location Options

Abstract

A number of factors have fostered growth in the co-location market in recent years. Lack of new facilities, burgeoning power and space requirements, and escalating costs have led to a dash for co-location services. The recession has inevitably slowed the building of new data centres as new projects are put on hold. But this and enterprises looking to reduce their capital expenditure have only served to buoy up demand for co-location and associated managed services. Steady growth in the market will continue because demand continues to outstrip supply. Legislation and compliance issues continue to ensure that security, availability and energy remain top priorities for enterprise and public sector customers. Cloud computing is unlikely to reduce demand for co-location services in the medium term - security and compliance issues will mean that even public and private clouds will need regional co-location services.

Table of Contents

• Executive summary
• In a nutshell
• Key messages
• Hosting services: market segmentation
• Four segments
• What are data-centre co-location services?
• ' Retail' co-location and the hosting ecosystem
• Co-location and hosting specialists
• Telecoms and network operators
• IT outsourcers and services players
• Technical capabilities
• Market drivers
• Fostering growth
• Financial services, entertainment and media, and IT services lead the demand for co-location space
• Increased public sector interest
• Customers get pickier in a recession
• Power and efficiency
• Compliance drives demand
• Future trends
• Market growth
• Greater demand for green
• The cloud: threat or opportunity for co-location?
• Evaluating co-location hosts
• Key considerations
• Service-level agreements
• Audits
• Power efficiency
• Network services
• Maintenance
• Customers should seek expert assistance
• Appendix
• Classification of tiers

List of Tables

• Table 1: Four tier levels
• Table 2: Typical data-centre redundancy levels

List of Figures

• Figure 1: IT hosting services ecosystem
• Figure 2: Growth in European broadband access market
• Figure 3: Modular ' pod' architecture
• Figure 4: Co-location services market: growth forecast ($ million)