October 24, 2003
Where's Your Server?
How close a relationship do you have with your server? Data center professionals smile about "server huggers" - customers who like their equipment in a facility near their office for easy access. But as more and more IT outsourcing jobs move overseas to locales like India or the Phillippines, the issue of the physical location of servers is becoming more important to customers. NewsFactor reports that prospects are asking application server providers where their servers will be located.
The issue cuts two ways. US providers are finding that potential clients in overseas markets prefer that their server be local, rather than in North America. But the story also notes moves by IBM that "will make it easier for IBM to deploy its servers for on-demand, hosted services to offshore data locales, such as India."
If US companies aren't sensitive about where their server is located, that may change soon. We're entering an election year, and Americans are unhappy about the state of the economy and the job market. On complex issues, politicans often seek out convenient scapegoats that plug into their agendas. Expect the offshore outsourcing issue to become politicized soon.
If that happens, the location of one's servers and data centers may create "headline risk" for customers and prospects. If they haven't asked about it, they probably will soon.
Our firm recently opened a NOC and TSC in Manila. From our perspective we can house servers we are responsible for here in Dallas or in Manila. The location of the engineers is really unrelated to the location of the servers. Typically we are most sensitive to access to power and bandwidth - both of which are more reliable and less expensive in Dallas than in Manila. At the end of the day, we use highly educated people from Manila due to lower labor costs - typically the servers and the customers are still here in the US.
Posted by: Alexander Muse at October 24, 2003 05:37 PMWe open a data Center in Panama in a previous Us Military base in Ft Clayton and we offer the same quality of service you may expect from a US data center in a tax free environment. Our employee are well educated and ex employee of the IT department of the Us Military base en Panama.
Panama is a telecomunicacion HUB with huge bandwidth available from five submarine fiber optic network crossing the istmus of panama
I find that the location of servers is important to firms in the Midwest, which is supporting the Regional Data Center businesses in Tier 2 cities such as Cincinnati, OH, Louisville, KY, Indianapolis, IN, etc.
Executives see value in having their servers geographically close to their support staff and headquarters and second Tier City providers often provide the experience and financial stability, with the infrastructure required when compared to Worldwide providers such as IBM, AT&T, MCI, Sungard, etc.
I have experienced several fortune 500 firms who have re-located their servers from these "big name" providers in Tier 1 cities to Tier 2 city locations to have them closer to headquarters and to reduce cost.
The regional data center model is providing unique value.
Posted by: Philip Thornberg at November 6, 2003 10:47 AM