Virtualisation: the future of data centres for SMEs

Traditionally for many small businesses, a hosting setup would often comprise of some servers in a small room or a rack in the corner of the office. Knowing that the infrastructure is on-site and within reach gives many companies a sense of security. It does also mean that the on-site technician can easily replace components should they fail and physically check switches, routers etc. 

Equally there are some risks that need to be considered here, including the need for additional power which, in many rented office spaces, may not be adequate. In addition to this, servers and equipment often give off a lot of heat. Therefore, cooling can be an issue and standard air-conditioning within an office is usually insufficient. Additional cooling equipment would need to be installed to maintain the correct temperature and prevent any servers from overheating.  

There are, of course, further risks that simply cannot be avoided, such as a power cuts, fire and water damage. One of our customers used to host servers in their basement and had to find another solution when a storm caused their basement to flood – so it’s better to be prepared. Hosting on site also has a significant impact on companies’ insurance premiums, another reason why many companies have chosen to move their IT infrastructure offsite. For example, one of our customers has saved ?10,000 on their annual insurance premiums for this very reason.  

So as you can see, there are a number of reasons why SMEs are turning to hosting providers. Service providers have state-of-the-art-data centres with the capacity to support millions of customers and the means to invest heavily in R&D to maintain the quality and standards small businesses can only dream of. They also take care of all the risks to ensure customers have a smooth service. Businesses that turn to professional hosting also have the added benefit of paying monthly on a OPEX model without the surprise of large CAPEX investment at the time of upgrade or when their hardware fails. Should this happen or the needs of the business change, they have the flexibility to either add additional hardware or upgrade their existing set up and cancel the old.  

What about further in the future? What can small businesses expect to see from IaaS providers? Current trends of increased cloud adoption have led many to think virtual data centres will be the future. The reason for this may be that SMEs will require greater scalability in the digital age, as well as the ability to better manage infrastructure costs. It also fits in better with modern ways of working – such as being able to access anything from anywhere. It’s going to get easier and easier for the average small business to manage and configure their data center storage in a simple way… virtually.