Ted Ritter, the Principal Research Analyst with Nemertes Research raised an unexpected challenge this week when he suggested that current collocation demand is growing faster than current colocation supply. This means a shortage. He expects the initial crunch to begin this year reaching a dramatic $1.9 billion facilities gap by 2015.
In an era data center outsourcing, colocation is just one part of a larger portfolio of options that also include cloud computing, platform as a service, and infrastructure as a service. By studying the demand rate over time for each of these services, Nemestes Research isolated colocation growth trends and estimated that demand for colocation is increasing. While colocation currently represents about 8.75% of total enterprise data center space, it will rise to 14.11% by 2015. That shift is significant enough to create a $1.9 billion supply gap.
While this study is focused on enterprise usage, it might be helpful to ask about the impact upon that data center planning for small to medium businesses. One, it is likely that colocation services will respond to the growing demand and be prepared to meet the increased demands by 2015. As far as SMBs go, the bigger challenge is developing a long-term data center strategy that includes growth, resource utilization, as well as redundancy and disaster planning. A good plan will be prepared to respond to market conditions as needed to guarantee data backup and security.
Integracon engineers can your business as you walk through the process of strategic planning, design, and implementation. To learn about how we can help you prepare for your company’s needs, contact Integracon at 865-330-2323, or chat via our contact page at Integracon.com.
