Your Data Centre has New Owners – Now What?

Introduction

The news that Sungard Availability Services went into administration and its facilities are to be acquired, may cause many organisations to reconsider what to do next with their hosting and many contracts often have a break clause due to change of ownership. PTS has decades of experience helping clients in similar situations. Here is a 5–point action list and some of the questions to ask to ensure you have the right hosting environment for your business: 

1. Review and assess the current landscape

Is this the get out you’ve been waiting for? Is the new operating environment going to support your business needs? Who is the new owner behind the scenes?  Do you know their pedigree in operating Data Centres – do they have the right management team? What state are the contracts in for maintenance and support of the facility infrastructure? Will the 3rd party contracts support the service levels you need?

2. Conduct an in-depth site audit

You’ve decided you need to move out, but where do you go? Are there alternative sites? Where are they? What are the latency requirements you need for the network?  Do they have space/power/cooling? Can they offer you one contiguous area and first right of refusal in an adjacent space?

3. Carry out proper due diligence and facility assessments

Down select a number of sites for issuing an RFP. What technical questions do you need to ask to ascertain whether the facility is built, secured, and operated to the standards that the operator says it is and meets your needs as a business? How do you verify this? How do you make sure you ask all the right questions and in a way that leads to clear, unambiguous answers?

4. Select the site which is right for your business requirements

You’ve got your RFP responses back – but they’ve all proposed something different and you’re not sure if it’s what you asked for and whether the pricing is comparable. How would you score any RFP responses to ensure you have the best partner for your hosting? When you go on the site visits, do you know what to look for in order to differentiate between competing sites? How do you spot the red flags? Will your analysis of the bids stand up to scrutiny from your Procurement team and audit?

5. Ensure the contracts are robust and cover every eventuality

You’ve selected the winning bidder but what’s typical in terms of negotiating costs and ensuring the contract supports your business need? What’s a typical contract term length? Can you have a break clause earlier? Can you expand and contract and have your monthly recurring rate adjusted appropriately or will there be penalties or lock–ins?

Expert advice and guidance

There is a lot to think about when moving Data Centre, particularly when rapid decisions need to be made, which can leave many clients stuck in facilities with very poor service or availability. Moving Data Centres is high risk, a risk lessened if you seek independent people, with over thirty-eight years’ experience helping many other clients with their Data Centre hosting. Why just consider migration? PTS can help organisations transform their IT estate so that the target Data Centres are part of a hybrid ecosystem, with services delivered both there and from the cloud.

If you want to talk to us about any of the five points above, or find out more about the expert advice and guidance PTS can offer, please follow the links below.