{"id":49625,"date":"2016-11-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-28T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/5-reasons-your-company-should-consolidate-its-data-center\/"},"modified":"2016-11-28T09:52:14","modified_gmt":"2016-11-28T09:52:14","slug":"5-reasons-your-company-should-consolidate-its-data-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/2\/32275\/enterprise\/storage\/5-reasons-your-company-should-consolidate-its-data-center","title":{"rendered":"5 Reasons Your Company Should Consolidate Its Data Center"},"content":{"rendered":"

Consolidation of data center<\/a> footprints is an emerging topic. This aggregation or consolidation is mainly effective when the business is distributed in multiple geographies and it is growing rapidly. But small organizations, which are not (or only minimally) spread across locations, may not opt for consolidation. So, the decision and benefits of consolidation may vary from point to point. The main purpose of consolidation is to make data centers more efficient and cost effective. Apart from this, the other benefits include: easy to maintain compliance, strong security implementation and increased energy efficiency. Cloud infrastructure<\/a> is playing a very important role for these consolidation activities, which leads to superconvergence. Overall, there are multiple factors which motivate organizations to opt for data center consolidation<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

What Is the Challenge?<\/span><\/h2>\n

Business enterprises face increasingly complex challenges every day. Every enterprise wants to securely store and process data as economically as possible. However, big data<\/a> makes this task difficult. Servers<\/a> are under relentless loads which may cause performance issues and impact business continuity. There is, therefore, a strong case for consolidating data centers. Chief information officers<\/a> (CIOs) tend to weigh the pros and cons of having their own data centers and that of colocation<\/a>.The emergence of cloud<\/a> has provided great relief to the CIOs who want to expand data center capabilities without loosening the purse strings too much.\n<\/p>\n

Why Consolidation Is Important<\/span><\/h2>\n

A number of factors make consolidation of data centers important. Businesses face more complex challenges in protecting their data while their servers have to manage an ever-increasing load of complex and varied data. Clearly, the challenges are new and more difficult. The main reasons for consolidating data centers are given below:\n<\/p>\n

1. Server Load Management<\/span><\/h2>\n

Almost every business needs to manage huge volumes of both structured<\/a> and unstructured data<\/a> on a regular basis and the load is unrelenting. The current situation is quite unlike that of even 10 years ago. Huge data load processing has been putting severe pressure on server performance, which could result in performance issues and server overheating, which in turn could lead to more serious issues such as data loss<\/a>. Data center consolidation increases server load capacity and improves server cooling, thereby reducing the possibility of server performance issues.\n<\/p>\n

2. Increased Control of Systems by the IT Department<\/span><\/h2>\n

Consolidation of data centers opens multiple opportunities of optimization, such as server load management and transport of data. From the perspective of the IT department, the architecture is more straightforward: there are fewer pipes to monitor and the dataflow<\/a> patterns are more visible. This gives the IT department the opportunity to deploy advanced protocols and management strategies.\n<\/p>\n

3. Easier Security Management<\/span><\/h2>\n

Consolidation entails reduction in the scope of security of data centers overall. Since the business enterprise may close down or reduce the size of operations of data centers at other locations, the scope of security can be reduced. This will bring many benefits such as reduced cost due to a reduced need for resources. Since the data centers are consolidated, this enables the business enterprise to increase the effectiveness of information security<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

4. Easier Disaster Recovery<\/span><\/h2>\n

Think of the challenges the IT department faces when multiple data centers at multiple locations are faced with serious issues such as outages. Restoring normalcy can take a long time, depending on the severity of the issue and how the issue is being resolved. The impact on the business can be serious. Data center consolidation means that the IT department needs to manage centralized IT resources only. There are fewer resources, and as a result, serious issues can be managed with higher quality and in less time.\n<\/p>\n

5. Compliance<\/span><\/h2>\n

When data centers are spread across locations, it is a challenge for businesses to make sure that its IT operations comply with standard and advanced regulations and processes. Multiple IT teams, disparate IT systems and resources always make it difficult to ensure compliance to a single, global set of standards. Consolidated data centers make it easier to implement processes because of centralized nature of operations and fewer IT teams.\n<\/p>\n

Is It Required for Organizations of All Sizes?<\/span><\/h2>\n

While data centers occupy an important place in the context of business strategies of all organizations, consolidation may be relevant only in the case of organizations with data centers in multiple locations. Smaller organizations with smaller footprints may already have a centralized data center. Such organizations may need consolidation only if they expand.\n<\/p>\n

The benefits accruing from data center consolidation notwithstanding, it needs to be acknowledged that the costs of the exercise in the short and medium term are high, which can be a prohibitive factor for smaller organizations.\n<\/p>\n

Government Cases for Consolidation<\/span><\/h2>\n

One of the most persuasive reasons for data center consolidation is that of the federal government of the United States. The U.S. federal government had multiple data centers which accounted for huge energy consumption and carbon footprints. For example, in 2012 federal data centers consumed almost 12 billion kWh of electricity. Considering the problems with multiple data centers, the federal government decided on the following measures:\n<\/p>\n