The role of data centres in digital transformation

Businesses are waking up to the highly-competitive reality of the new world of business today, where it is necessary to move faster and more nimbly than before. It is no surprise then that many organisations are turning to digital transformation as an enabler to reposition themselves to better take advantage of opportunities as they arise.

For those held back by ageing IT systems, deployment in a modern data centre (DC) can help transform their digital infrastructure and remove the encumbrance of legacy and outdated systems at the same time.

A crucial advantage of a colocation deployment is that it eliminates the substantial costs needed to establish a robust IT environment. While the process of getting IT set up and running is typically straightforward, ensuring uptime even in the face of untimely equipment breakdowns is both a costly and technically-challenging endeavour. After all, users do not really care if an outage was caused by a power failure or network disruption – only that service is no longer available.

Moreover, as industries grow more regulated and new rules are created to govern systems pertaining to payment and personal data storage, it makes sense for businesses not to be ensnared by the intricacies of meeting various guidelines and accreditations. The time and expenses incurred on preparing and certifying an on-premises environment to these standards would be far better spent on digital transformation.

This is not to say that standards are not relevant. A regulatory standard such as OutsourcedService Providers Audit Report (OSPAR) ensures that an outsourced service provider offers theequivalent level of governance and rigour in their processes as mandated by the MonetaryAuthority of Singapore (MAS) – giving financial services organisations much needed peace ofmind.

You may have heard of the story of the fired administration wreaking havoc on IT systems under their control in revenge. Though preventing such incidents remains highly dependent on the proper implementation of a granular access system, a data centre provider can guard against some forms of insider sabotage as an independent party that manages and logs access to the physical hardware.

Importantly, IT teams can hence focus on innovation and their organisation’s business needs,secure in the knowledge that the maintenance and reliability of the underlying facilities are takencare of by the data centre provider. With the latter responsible for replacing worn-out or damaged equipment, there is also no surprises in terms of cost.

There is no question that a DC allows for significantly faster deployments and expansion. This is because they are essentially specialised facilities designed from the get-go for hosting an ample amount of compute equipment and the corresponding power required, including that for cooling and backup.

The redundant conduits for network connectivity are also in place, making it easier to provide network connectivity, often with a greater choice of providers to boot. In contrast, a server room deployment often necessitates a long wait for connectivity to be provisioned, and depending on the location, options can sometimes be limited

Moreover, additional space for future expansion can be specified to the data centre provider at the beginning, ensuring adequate capacity for growth. Compared to a server room with limited space and power capacity, the far larger footprint of the data centre offers greater growth potential too.

A crucial part of digital transformation is to ensure sufficient redundancy so that digital services continue to operate even when systems encounter catastrophic failure. But doing so with an on-premise deployment is often significantly more costly and complicated.

An alternative approach is to mirror core systems to a secondary site. In data centres, this is often a simple matter of procuring the requisite connectivity between two DCs for an active-passive or active-active deployment. In addition, going with the same provider for both sites will offer the added convenience of dealing with similar processes, and ensures that the same high standards are upheld on both primary and secondary sites.

Singtel’s DC West data centre, for example, is optimised for any cloud deployments that you will have in your digital transformation plan.

Built with a fully redundant power system and high-speed inter-DC fibre connectivity with up to three diverse paths, DC West ensures continuous operations, eliminating downtime and guarantees redundancy. Connected to a network of data centres island-wide, DC West offers the leverage you need for your business. Hosting in DC West also means that you have a range of managed security services available to protect your digital assets.

For more information about DC West and other Singtel’s data centres, contact us at here.