How Small Businesses Can Benefit from a Data Center
Data centers used to be the domain of huge online giants, like Google or eBay. But as accessibility has increased and prices decreased, the data center has become a viable alternative for small businesses who want to trade in the capital and maintenance costs of a server (and security, backups, etc.) for predictable monthly fees that cover hardware, maintenance and support.
How are small businesses using the data center to their advantage?
1. Disaster Recovery
We all know backups should be kept off site. And we all know how easy it is to forget to take that drive home. Plus, how do you keep the backup safe? How do you restore it if needed? Backing up to a data center solves all of these problems, and makes data security truly invisible.
A data center can also go beyond a typical nightly backup. For example, a principal in a Chicago financial firm had lost access to office space when he was with a previous firm. Their office building caught on fire, and though their own office was unharmed, the Fire Marshall closed the building down for two weeks. Without access to the office, they were unable to access their server, and the results were devastating for the company.
To guard against a similar scenario and to keep data as safe as possible, the firm utilized a data center solution: real-time, mirrored backup of their office server to a server housed in a data center. If their on-site server goes down for any reason, the network automatically fails over to the real-time mirror.
2. Software as a Service
Software as a service is the most popular use of the data center. Instead of paying for the infrastructure for business applications like email and collaboration, customer databases, document management and the like, companies simply subscribe to a software service that is hosted in a data center. You don’t have to purchase or maintain any of the hardware or software, but you get access to enterprise level software applications on-demand. It’s a classic win-win.
3. Business Processes
Business-critical processes belong in a data center. Having them anywhere else isn’t worth the risk. From ecommerce to web based applications and more, small businesses are moving to the data center to guarantee uptime and accessibility.
4. Information Portals
A Chicago firm needed an online information portal to interact with their clients, partners and remote employees. They could have installed a dedicated application server in their office, paying the hardware and labor costs to own and maintain the systems. Of course, it was nearly impossible to justify that kind of IT expenditure for this project, especially right now.
They chose to rent space on a server in a data center for a small monthly fee. The data center allowed them to keep innovating and providing additional value to their clients.
5. File Servers
We don’t see this one very often, but for the right business is can be a home run. Is your onsite file server causing problems? Downtime? Repairs? You know if it’s not pretty. You can lease a server in a data center for a monthly fee, and the cost and trouble of maintenance shifts from you to the data center. You don’t own the equipment anymore, but that’s a welcome loss.
Moving the file server into a data center can free some small companies to move out of a physical office space and work virtually. Add up office lease savings on top of server savings, and it’s a fantastic deal.
Do you know of other smart uses of the data center for small businesses?
