Colocation data centers were the topic at the February Philadelphia
meeting of 7x24 Exchange Delaware Valley Chapter. Representatives from the University of
Pennsylvania, Wilmington University, Comcast and Vanguard shared their opinions
on this topic. Here are a few takeaways
from this meeting:
- Considering colocation to support new and to improve existing services.
- Comcast is going to regional data centers to support new and existing services in various regions of the country enabling them to increase performance and roll out new products quickly. Services are moving closer to the edge.
- University libraries are moving away from hard books.
- Universities are moving to cloud-based grading services such as Blackboard.
- Mission critical recovery – a separate location is needed for disaster recovery and backup
- To support cloud services
- To take advantage of new technologies that might be very costly in-house
- Companies no longer want to be in the DC business
- Data centers are a huge expense
- If you host it you own it
- Growing comfort levels in not owning and operating
- Security is not as much of a barrier due to proven case studies
- Companies are still feeling their way around
- Vanguard representative feels that larger banks are moving to colocation perhaps more quickly than other vertical market sectors.
