Regular readers know I am a fan of using co-location providers for small and mid-size businesses. Larger businesses have the mass and scale to run their own data centers.
We are seeing a dramatic uptick in the number of organizations seeking co-location. Some are moving because of external factors (the CIO with an elevator going through the data center opted to go co-lo, as did a CIO where flooding damaged the data center building.) Others are experiencing growth, and finding the costs to expand in place prohibitive.
Whatever the reason, these organizations often look to us to provide advice and counsel.
As a part of the co-location decision, we believe in an RFP process.
Analyzing hundreds of responses leads us to make a few observations:
Were they intentionally misleading, or did they not understand?
We work very hard for the client and the respondents to play fairly.
We recommend our clients visit co-location providers and “kick the tires” before making a final decision.
This is where gaps in the expectation versus delivery are often exposed, yielding more observations. I like getting to the co-lo site an hour before the formal tour, and take a walk around the building. I take my trusty BlackBerry with me, and take pictures of things I see. In fairness, I am not including pictures in this blog post intentionally as I don’t want any vendor feeling bad, or any vendor using this to market against another vendor. That said, what I find is vendor seem so driven to please they overstate the facts:
To be clear, other than forging Bill Gate’s name we don’t do anything illegal. We’re not scaling fences, or using ladders. Just a nice stroll around the building.
One client recently insisted in participating by taking a water bottle with them on tours. While only one vendor didn’t challenge the bottle, that one vendor lost a large amount of credibility.
I can’t stress enough the importance of keeping a facility neat, tidy and tour ready. Seeing a cage in a co-location facility used as a janitor’s closet leaves me scratching my head. Having all the covers off HVAC devices with nobody working on them makes one wonder about the overall maintenance plan.
If a client asks to see the mechanicals, show them. We recently had one vendor that hesitated, and this left a sour taste in the client’s mouth. The vendor did eventually show the space…
Power is an important element of cost. Vendors putting all their profit in the power creates a disparity with others.
One or two vendors like to trash their competitors. We’re not fans of that approach. Speak to your own merits.
One last thing we tell our clients is to check references, and to Google the vendor. Ask if there have been business impacting outages, and how they are to work with. If a vendor has had a data center floor impacting issue, hopefully they’ve already mentioned it, and how they incident management process quickly addressed, and steps taken to address. This is electro mechanical gear, and things CAN happen. Rarely!