Slashdot Mirror
The Twighlight of Small In-House Data Centers
dcblogs writes "Virtualization, cloud services and software-as-a-service (SaaS) is making it much easier to shift IT infrastructure operations to service providers, and that is exactly what many users are doing. Of the new data center space being built in the U.S., service providers accounted for about 13% of it last year, but by 2017 they will be responsible for more than 30% of this new space, says IDC. 'We are definitely seeing a trend away from in-house data centers toward external data centers, external provisioning,' said Gartner analyst Jon Hardcastle. Among those planning for a transition is the University of Kentucky's CIO, who wants to reduce his data center footprint by half to two thirds. He expects in three to five years service provider pricing models 'will be very attractive to us and allow us to take most of our computing off of our data center.' IT managers says a big reason for the shift is IT pros don't want to work in data centers at small-to-mid size firms that can't offer them a career path. Hank Seader, managing principal of the Uptime Institute, said that it takes a 'certain set of legacy skills, a certain commitment to the less than glorious career fields to make data centers work, and it's hard to find people to do it.'"
People pitched the timesharing computing model for a lot of reasons, lack of control of the hardware and the software rental treadmill being two of the largest. Every time I hear someone gushing over The Cloud and Software As A Service, it's history repeating itself.
Dog is my co-pilot.
In general this is true of any industry. As certain services no longer become differentiating and become commoditized, you're going to get a situation where its best to outsource these activities to the player who can do it for you cheapest.
The biggest mistake that companies make is when these data centers are part of your core business. For a University this is not the case - their core business is research and education. For my company, however, we will continue to run our own geographically redundant datacenters because they power our core business - we're a text message gateway.
That there's a 'twilight' is just the natural progression in any industry - however just figure that the jobs that remain in data center work will be directly involved with the core business. If you're at RackSpace or Amazon, then the data is your core business. If you're like us, then the datacenter is so critical to core business that you're de-facto in a position of power in the company.
Good luck to those mediocre data center managers at centers not involved in core-business. I'd start looking for a new job now.
"much CHEAPER to shift IT infrastructure operations to service providers"
It's not about easier. It's trading control, stability, and uptime for Lower IT operation costs. Executives dont care about safety of data, stability, uptime or control. All they care about is how good does the next quarter look to the board. Who cares if the company tanks in 5 years, Next quarter is all that is important.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.