Bigger is Better: How Steadfast Gives You a Leg Up in Data Center Economics

Imagine if every company were responsible for generating their own power, we would have overbuilt power plants everywhere, as everyone would need to build out to a peak level that they thought they would achieve in the future. In addition, a single failure in your power plant will bring down all your operations and just imagine the workload in managing all those facilities. You can't risk running out of power, that would just stall and ruin your business, so what did we do to resolve this issue? Centralized power generation and distribution.

It now amazes me that so many businesses still operate in this outdated model for their IT and data infrastructure, keeping their own data closets and small data center in-house. If you're one of these companies, you're not alone, as recent studies show that only 22% of businesses have begun using centralized IT or cloud services, but hopefully this article informs you as to why this isn't a good long-term strategy.

Growing IT Demands on Small Business

The needs and demands for storage, processing, and transaction speeds are going up at alarming rates. How do you know you'll be ready for what is coming 5 years down the road, let alone 6 months? Things are just growing exponentially as we're tracking, storing and analyzing more things each and every day. As Eric Schmidt said in 2010, "There was 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that much information is now created every 2 days, and the pace is increasing." The use of Big Data by business is just starting, so the demands are only expected to keep growing. This is compounded by the fact that more people are working from home or mobile and customers are demanding more immediate access to information, meaning all of this new information needs to be accessible 24/7 from around the world.

Now, in 2013, these data needs are not "nice to have" features, they are "must have" features that a business needs to survive and stay competitive. On their own, how is a small business going to plan for that type of data growth? To prepare for that growth you need to either over-build, wasting money and resources now for resources you may never need in the future, or you're not going to be ready for the future. You need a partner to help get you the scale.

Things Get Cheaper with Scale

I am sure most of you are familiar with the idea of "economies of scale." Simply put, it is that per unit costs go down (often significantly) with an increase in size/scale and that idea holds very true with data centers and technology. What makes it even greater is that these economies of scale aren't just on initial, upfront costs, but on the recurring costs as well. While a small data closet may cost $15,000 or more per kw to build with effective power and cooling redundancy, you'll also be paying twice as much just cool the equipment and condition/distribute the power, all at standard commercial power rates. In a larger scale data center facility (500+ kw), all these costs can be nearly cut in half as system and energy efficiency can be greatly improved. Now, it doesn't make sense for most individual companies to build their own 500+ kw data center, but that is where the above analogy comes in, utilize centralized data centers to take advantage of those efficiencies.

This economies of scale don't just apply to the facilities, it also applies to workforce efficiency, network connectivity, and managed services. A large data center, like Steadfast, will already have experienced data center technicians, systems administrators, systems engineers, and network engineers working 24/7. What would it cost for you to put that same team together? We provide the team and expertise so you don't need to provide your own. What would it cost you to scale to 100+ Gbit/sec of Internet connectivity? You don't need to worry about that, we have the scale to do it as we have 113 Gbit/sec of Internet connectivity active right now. Why spend the $200k+ for a highly redundant NetApp SAN of your own when we can sell you capacity on ours for just $15/mo and just add more at a moments notice as needed?

Scale Gets You Better Service

Now, hopefully you can see how taking advantage of the scale Steadfast can deliver will save you money, but it can also deliver you a better level of service for less money. We are building, maintaining and monitoring thousands of servers for 1500+ companies each and every day. Our staff deals with a wide array of infrastructures, network designs, and problems. Chances are, if you bring us a problem, an idea, a plan, we've seen it before. We'll have the hands on experience and knowledge to bring to the table on almost any situation, 24/7. Is that something your in-house team can guarantee?

With building data center facilities for 1500+ customers, we need to take best practice into account as far as security and reliability to serve a wide array of customers. This means that all of our data center facilities are SSAE16 audited, have biometric + RFID based access controls and logging, have at least N+1 power redundancy, have 2N network redundancy, have extensive 24/7 monitoring, and have 24/7 on-site staffing. Would your in-house data center have all of those features? What is the value of being able to sleep better at night knowing you have all of those things? These things are included at no additional cost, due to our scale.

Steadfast Gets You the Scale You Need

How can you afford to keep your own local power generation station? How can you afford to have your own in-house data center? Steadfast already has 3+ MW of IT power, over 20,000 square feet of data center space, 30+ experienced IT professionals, and 113 Gbit/sec of Internet connectivity, we can be your centralized utility (with MUCH better service and support) that can provide the speed, reliability, and scale you need for your business to grow and expand. Due to the economies of scale, that can all be provided to you AND save you money.  This includes substantial space inside the world's largest data center at 350 E Cermak Rd in Chicago.

You don't need to worry about how you'll keep up with the data needs of the future, that is our business, you focus on your core business. You don't need to take the whole plunge at once either, we can be as little or as much as you might need. You could simply locate your existing servers with us in our data centers and take advantage of more efficient facilities, greater access to connectivity, 24/7 on-site staffing, etc. using colocation. You could have us also monitor and manage that equipment 24/7 with managed colocation. Otherwise, you could have us deal with everything and never have to worry about your own hardware or network design ever again and get managed dedicated servers (we can also use them to build you a custom private cloud) or our public cloud offerings.

if you'd like us to go into more details, please contact our sales team by emailing sales@steadfast.net or calling 312-602-2689 (option 2). We'd be more than happy to give you a free assessment of your current IT infrastructure to see where you might be able to take advantage of some more economies of scale.