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This is the directive that many companies are asking their IT departments to follow. Technology is an enabler that makes “doing more with less” possible, and with such a directive, determining the core competencies for your business and IT organization is critical.

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More than half of U.S. businesses utilize cloud computing, meaning that more than half of U.S. businesses turn to an outside provider for some form of IT management, whether it be colocation, IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), Saas (Software as a Service) or disaster recovery. So, how can businesses define the benefits and disadvantages of partnering with IT service providers?

Companies make a choice to either redirect IT management functions to partners, or continue to maintain IT services internally, for a variety of reasons. From allowing staff to focus on what’s unique to their business to ensuring proper disaster recovery planning, turning to a third party provider typically begins with a business change event that qualifies looking into alternative solutions for IT management.

Often, the greatest benefit to leaving the internal data center business is simple: you can free your staff to do things of greater value for overall better efficiency and reliability. A secondary benefit is reducing the overall capital investment, as well as the operating expense of running and maintaining your internal data center.

“Do more with less.”

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EVENTS THAT BRING BUSINESSESTO A HOSTING PARTNER:

Merger and/or acquisition

IT services, data or disaster-related

interruption

Growth and expansion

Monitoring of environment

24x7x365

Big data initiatives

Speed and scalability to deploy

applications

IT hardware refresh

New applicationsSpecific customer requirement

Moving to the cloud

New leadership or ownership

Small IT staff being asked to do more

with less

Regulatory compliance

concerns

You never consider all of the potential risks until a disaster event actually happens and creates a disruption in your business.

David Hilmer, VP of Information Technology GrafTech International

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Why turn to a partner to manage your IT environment?

Not mature in data center maintenance—allow those with core competencies in building, managing and running

data centers to be responsible for hosting critical data.

Turn capital expense into operating expense.

Inefficiency—staff is spending too much time on maintenance, instead of business critical tasks.

Recent power failure or limited disaster recovery and business continuity capabilities.

Space limitations—inability to bring additional equipment into environment due to space and/or power constraints.

Why keep your IT environment internal?

Total cost of ownership—perception that managing IT internally will be more cost-effective.

Security assurance—your business is #1, and only internal staff will have access to systems.

Expedient Data Centers, a leading IT infrastructure as a service provider, recently conducted a survey to better understand why businesses commonly engage service providers to manage their IT infrastructure, as well as to determine the benefits that come along with this decision. Here are the most common reasons expressed among industry IT leaders:

Mark Henderson, CIOCase Western Reserve University

We have some very smart people in information technology services. What I would love to see happen as a benefit is to free them from the tyranny of the urgent, which is responding to outages around blinking lights, and spending all of their talents in trying to keep technology running. That's not the best use of their talents and it’s not the mission of the university. I’d like to free my folks so they can live and breathe with our teaching faculty, research faculty, and students to bring innovative services and solutions to bear in furthering the mission of the institution.

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making the decision: what are your options?Businesses often determine whether they maintain their IT environment internally or leverage a partner based on their desire to maintain control of the infrastructure. End users fear for lack of control and access to the systems they’re running; uptime, availability and cost are also important considerations.

The start of a business’ evaluation process for engaging a hosting services provider is typically a result of a business-impacting event, which causes decision makers to recognize that a strategic change is needed to mitigate future risks. Technology and business leaders alike often find that running an internal data center causes a great deal of distraction from core competencies.

For instance, David Mewes, CIO in the medical devices industry, noted “It wasn’t a lot of value-add for us. We had to work with legacy-type applications and it wasn’t productive. We spent too much time dealing with DBAs and software patches.”

Where disaster recovery is concerned, many organizations don’t have the proper contingencies in place until a disaster happens. David Hilmer, VP of IT at GrafTech, reported “We recently had a power failure in the building that houses our data center and it took a full week to have the normal power to the building restored. While we successfully managed this event, we now have a greater appreciation for what a data center disruption could do to our business.”

In managing business risk, IT teams can choose to offload their IT environment to an outside provider and eliminate continuous maintenance and oversight from daily responsibilities. They may also decide to leverage a hosting partner for the benefits of the physical data center while they continue to manage the operating systems and respective applications. Lastly, some businesses may reevaluate the direction of their IT department and make the determination that maintaining an internal data center is the best course of action for their business.

David Hilmer, VP of Information Technology GrafTech International

If I choose a colocation arrangement, I’m going to maintain a certain amount of nimbleness because I can still manage the things that are most important to our business. I want to know that when I do projects or business changes, I’m still managing those servers myself.

BENEFITS:• Agility—staying current is part of strategic planning. Technology is pre-staged as needs

present themselves.• Flexibility and nimbleness to manage what’s important to your business.

• Utilize purpose-built facilities that are designed for greater reliability.

DISADVANTAGES:• Required to buy hardware.• Required to manage, maintain and refresh the hardware.

Benefits and drawbacks exist, whether the decision is made to leverage an external provider or to run your internal data center. However, the key to this decision is understanding how the benefits can outweigh the disadvantages in both scenarios.

Here are the survey’s most commonly cited benefits and disadvantages:

Option 1: Partner with an external provider to provide only the data center facility (raised floor, power, cooling, security, etc.)

In summary, when evaluating a move to an external provider,your business has three options:

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Partner with an external provider for all of your internal data center operations and infrastructure needsPartner with an external provider to

provide only the data center facility (raised oor, power, cooling, security, etc.)

Keep all systems and systems management internal

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Option 3: Keep all systems and systems management internal

Option 2: Partner with an external provider for all of your internal data center operations and infrastructure needs

BENEFITS:• All aspects of your IT environment are owned, operated and maintained by your internal staff.• In some cases, businesses may be able to manage their IT in-house cost-effectively,

depending upon the organization’s resources and their ability to scale.

DISADVANTAGES:• Firefighting—the problems of today can distract from planning for tomorrow.• ”The arms race effect”—your IT team must have consistent awareness for upgrades,

maintenance and next generation hardware.• Speed to utilization—if you place an order for servers, for example, it may be six, eight or

even twelve weeks out before you receive your order.• Cost of maintaining core infrastructure—CRAC units, batteries, generator(s) and diesel fuel.• Responsibility of security—your IT team must ensure the proper security for your

data while also managing auditing requirements.

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BENEFITS:• Developing a partnership with a hosting provider with best business practices means every

aspect of IT management is handled at the expert level.• Transform how IT is delivered—become more business process-oriented, less

technology-oriented.• Gain capacity for innovation.• Support your environment.• Buy only the capacity you need today.• In the event of calamity, you can fail over to a geographically diverse data center.• Focus your IT team on business-focused critical projects.• Stay up-to-date on hardware upgrades.• 24x7x365 watch on your data.

DISADVANTAGES:• Perceived loss of control.• Hesitation within your organization among more risk-averse roles, such as CFOs.• Changing configurations can be perceived as more difficult when involving an outside party.

ADDRESSING THE “CONTROL ISSUE”The most common concern cited among respondents to Expedient’s survey was a perceived loss of control. In each case, those who chose to partner with an outside provider found that their fears were alleviated in selecting a reputable partner with an established history that used industry standard best practices. Furthermore, the focus of the IT team was redirected to more business critical initiatives, which in turn, creates a more efficient and effective IT organization. In many instances, conducting a thorough evaluation of your strategic IT direction, which includes determining if and why your organization wants to be in the data center business, may prove to be paramount in establishing the way in which your organization operates and functions internally as well as in your respective industry.

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SUMMARYThe most significant benefit in exiting the internal center business is often freeing your IT staff to focus on work with greater value than unexpected or urgent data center maintenance. Reducing capital investment, as well as operating expenses is an additional advantage.

It’s important to know your options when determining whether to maintain your IT environment internally or partner with a provider. There are pros and cons to both, but understanding the benefits and disadvantages in both cases is key in making the decision.

About Expedient In addition to traditional data center colocation services, Expedient is known for offering a wide range of managed services such as cloud computing, remote backups, management of equipment, disaster recovery, storage area networks and more. Expedient’s eleven (11) Data Centers are all fully staffed with trained technology professionals 24/7/365 and all of the facilities are seamlessly interconnected by a fully redundant, 10gb fiber optic ring, which allows the company to essentially offer one hosting option in any of eleven (11) locations, across seven (7) geographically diverse markets (Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Memphis and Pittsburgh). Expedient’s individual markets are fully integrated to offer seamless solutions and support for over 1,500 corporate customers. Expedient’s legal name is Continental Broadband LLC, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Landmark Media Enterprises, LLC, a private firm with significant experience operating media and technology interests. Expedient’s approach complements a variety of industry and government compliance requirements including SOX, PCI DSS and HIPAA, supported by third-party SOC attestation. For additional information visit www.expedient.com.

Also available from the Expedient library of white papers:

Getting the Most Value From Your Cloud ProviderThrough a recent research study, third-party consultant Cloud Spectator found that the way most organizations are evaluating cloud providers is flawed, potentially leading organizations to select the wrong vendor. This white paper demonstrates how decision makers should evaluate and research potential providers to find the perfect fit for their organization. http://bit.ly/1oycb5Q

Not All Clouds Are Created EqualAs your organization looks to a cloud solution provider for services, there are key areas that need to be reviewed and essential questions that need to be covered. This white paper will provide an overview of the areas that should be considered, outlining a list of questions that every client should ask of any prospective cloud provider.http://bit.ly/1yHWJWa

Cloud Security UncompromisedTrusting your organization’s most critical data and business processes to an outside cloud services provider means more than simply relying on someone else to spin up your virtual images and keep an eye on backups. This white paper defines what it really means to ensure cloud security, emphasizing the importance of finding a cloud partner who will ensure your data remains fortified against attack. http://bit.ly/10icJfH

Translating TCO When Taking to the CloudAdopting a cloud solution does not always translate to lower total cost of ownership. This white paper outlines your path to finding a cloud provider and ensuring cost savings. http://bit.ly/10908M6

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