Datacentre: Colocation/Hosted Model - An Insight

The datacentre is the critical or nerve centre of the organisation where all information gets accessed across the organisation and beyond. It is important to have a well-defined strategy considering current and futuristic needs on basis of whether to have a datacentre in-house or explore hosting / colocation in partner premises or completely go in for hosted / managed services model or a balance of the in-house and colocation / hosted. This strategy varies from organisation to organisation, and sometimes also within the organisation.

In today’s context, it is seemingly possible as more and more organisations have already embarked on the journey with initiatives of either a balanced approach or hosted cum managed services model and others following suit. The key challenge is how we manage the datacentre colocated or hosted effectively either through current team or totally outsourced team or balance of both - with a common goal of ensuring business as usual and operations seamlessly.

Effective Management Of A Colocated Datacentre / Hosted Datacentre

Colocation / Hosted Facilities

• Future scalability

• OPEX Model (Recurring expenses) – current and for a period of five years.

• Is it owned premises or rented premises (accordingly cost and other parameters vary)

• Lock-in period and exit clause

• NDA and SLA

• Security and protection of datacentre – methods, tools, people

Location Of Datacentre Facility From The Office

Location of the colocated facility from your office / nearest office – touch point of your organisation is quite significant from these perspectives:

• Options for connectivity – Available, reliable and consistent

• Cost of connectivity to the last mile

• Futuristic needs for upgrade

• Performance and speed of access to the end users

• Who will manage the last mile, does the vendor provide or is it outsourced?

• What are multi-point access and failure – how the same are addressed, contingency planned in case of any outage.

Manage - Monitor - Measure

• Is it managed? If so, by whom and how they manage?

• What tools are used to manage the datacentre facilities and how the reports are shared (Example: Access to the datacentre specific to your IT equipment - is it secured, restricted and controlled, who has accessed and the report of the same).

• The periodicity of review with their customers – monthly

• In case of urgency what is the process of access to your own equipment located in datacentre – special approvals

• What are the measurement parameters – KPI (like availability, outage – planned v/s unplanned, performance of key equipment relevant to your needs , any control violations)

• How we monitor the performance and finally measure the same

DRP and BCP

• Detailed DR document covering Recovery Time Objective and Recovery Point Objective

• Alignment to respective organisation needs

• Turnaround strategy in case of any DR…time to turn around, damage control, contingency and impact to business operations

• DR site provided or available – methods and options

• Method of communication in case of DR and working on alternatives till the main site comes up…there is minimal impact to operations

• Review and performance of DR testing periodically and sharing the same

Controls and Compliance

Every organisation has defined controls and compliance parameters.

• What are the various control activities outlined for the colocated site (for instance, access review.)

• How we audit and check the same to ensure 100 percent compliance 100 percent of the time

• How we report non-conformance and actions taken to mistake proof the same

• Any violations of controls - how the same is reported

• How the partner carries control checks and audit checks and ensures compliance of the same and submits reports for review.

• Periodic audit by external auditors as a part of corporate and IT governance

In summary, whether we outsource or not, it’s our responsibility to manage the vendor / partner to deliver the high level of performance with 100 percent availability to support our business operations effectively. Equally important is that the partner be accountable for the overall performance of datacentre, and be part of the organisation’s extended team.