The price of data center outsourcing: Security, costs and more explored

• Data center outsourcing: Ten best practices
  A growing number of midsized organizations are opting to outsource much, if not all, of their data center services. Should you be one of them?
• Disaster recovery strategies: Should you outsource, manage in-house or partner?
  A key consideration when selecting a disaster recovery facility site is whether to outsource, maintain your site in-house or partner with others on disaster recovery strategy.

Dave Banks, chief technology officer at the growing online auction business PropertyRoom.com Inc., rents space in a colocation facility owned by Savvis Inc. near his company's headquarters in Mission Viejo, Calif., for the IT infrastructure that runs the business' back-end operations. His company already owned servers when he arrived in 2003, and it made sense to make use of them. Any enhancements or fixes needed, he can zip up the road and make the tweak himself.

For PropertyRoom's customer-facing website, which is subject to frequent traffic spikes and generates most of the company's $34 million in annual sales, a different strategy prevails. Banks utilizes Savvis' "cloud" facility in Chicago to ensure bandwidth and scalability. "I've never seen our servers there and don't need to," Banks said.

• Negotiating a successful data center outsourcing arrangement
  Outsourcing can save money. However, it can also increase costs and business risk, and lead to a loss of control of your company's central nervous system.
• Data center outsourcing: Contract do's and don'ts
  Data center outsourcing contracts should focus on performance and availability metrics. Learn more about the do's and don'ts of setting up a data center outsourcing contract.

Data center outsourcing is on the upswing and a recession economy is only one reason. A recent study from research and advisory firm Computer Economics Inc. shows that more companies plan to increase rather than decrease their data center outsourcing and most are pleased by the results. Another telling sign? Data center providers are expanding facilities and adding services.

First, some hype control: The whole world is not going to start outsourcing data centers overnight. The percentage of companies that entrust some part of their data center operations to third-party providers has hovered around 33% in recent years, according to Computer Economics survey data. But an uptick of three percentage points in 2008 (from 32% to 35%, an increase of 9%) is a harbinger of greater growth to come, the firm believes.

Learn more about the factors driving outsourced data centers in "Study: Data center outsourcing increases; most happy with results." Also:

• Data center outsourcing grows in popularity among midsized firms
  As Gartner and others see growing interest in outsourcing data centers in part or in whole, cost alone is rarely the sole driving factor.
• New offerings that may cut the cost of your IT disaster recovery plan
  Server virtualization, plus software-based replication and cloud computing offerings, can reduce the cost of your IT disaster recovery plan.
• Recession leaves IT pros mixed on outsourcing
  IT professionals, recession aside, remain mixed on the merits and negatives of IT outsourcing as a way to counter staff cuts and contain facility costs.
• IT spending lull continues post-stimulus
  Data center spending remains in the doldrums, with some bright spots in virtualization and related infrastructure.

For a recent data center advisory board question, SearchDataCenter.com asked its panel if data center managers should consider cloud computing for their operations, and under what scenarios.

The panelists offered very specific advice on where to use cloud computing, and provided a checklist of cloud computing risks to consider, while others offered healthy skepticism about the entire concept.

The advice includes points on:

• Why IT managers need to be cloud computing subject-matter experts.
• Why a full risk analysis should be done before entering the cloud.
• What cloud computing considerations and risks you should keep in mind.

Read more about security concerns in"Data center panel weighs cloud computing risks, rewards." Also:

• Interview: Chris Nickerson of TruTV's 'Tiger Team'
  Chris Nickerson of Lares Consulting explains best practices for penetration tests and the risks of outsourcing.
• How to Secure Cloud Computing
  On-demand computing services can save large enterprises and small businesses a lot of money, but security and regulatory compliance become difficult.

• Data centers (SearchCIO-Midmarket.com resource center)
• Data center operations management (SearchDataCenter.com resource center)
• Data protection(SearchSecurity.com resource center)