Insight Type: Blog

Embarking on a digital transformation journey – all you need to know

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Why digital transformation?

Corporate IT is under pressure from all sides to transform and deliver more agile solutions to meet competitive forces and achieve business objectives. Enter digital transformation…

Why now?

Digital transformation is driven by a confluence of factors that compel organisations to rethink their IT infrastructures. Changes in corporate vision, objectives, and circumstances – such as growth, mergers, or relocations – often render existing systems inadequate to meet new demands. Technological advancements also play a crucial role, as emerging tools and platforms offer opportunities for innovation and efficiency. Stakeholders increasingly demand seamless digital experiences, and the pressures of globalisation require businesses to stay competitive on an international scale. Tightening budgets add another layer of complexity, pushing companies to adopt cost-effective digital solutions. Ultimately, the competitive landscape necessitates continuous adaptation, making digital transformation not just an option, but a necessity for sustained success.

Why make the change?

Digital transformation is often driven by existing constraints within an organisation’s current infrastructure. Inflexible infrastructure hampers scalability and adaptability, while an unacceptable risk profile exposes the business to potential threats. High capital and running costs strain financial resources, and inadequate security levels leave the organisation vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Excessive downtime disrupts operations, and location issues complicate access and management. Furthermore, incompatibility with new technology stifles innovation and growth. Addressing these constraints through digital transformation can significantly enhance efficiency, security, and resilience.

The solution... a hybrid delivery model

At present, 50–70% of IT transactions are delivered on in-house or on-premise infrastructures. However, in the face of technological change and market pressures, it is unlikely that this can be maintained – hence organisations are increasingly seeking new hybrid delivery models.

The concept

Achieve cost reductions and efficiencies, modernise and extend your core technology by transitioning parts of your setup to public or private clouds – whilst keeping other, potentially more sensitive elements in a managed data centre or colocation facility.

The result

A more agile, scalable and efficient IT infrastructure.

Hybrid IT... what does it involve?

To achieve a hybrid IT strategy, businesses must undergo both a physical and virtual transformation. It’s a complex process, but there are things that can be done to make it easier – notably, taking a two-phase approach to transformation and enlisting a trusted partner to work alongside throughout the project.

The two-phase approach

  1. 1. Transition: Bring together your IT estate by moving everything to one physical location.
  2. 2. Consolidation: Distribute the redesigned estate across your chosen hybrid solution

Choosing a trusted partner

Transition and consolidation can be eased by choosing the right data centre partner to:

  • Provide the facilities and the services required to support your transition – e.g. assistance with challenges when decanting from multiple physical locations.
  • Deliver flexible contracts, allowing you to adopt the two-phase approach and use additional resource temporarily.
  • Ensure resilient connectivity to your offices, public and private clouds.

Why colo and why Datum?

We provide a robust colocation service for business-critical IT which is backed by a range of lifecycle services designed to support you at every stage of the transformation. Our flexible approach ensures you can adjust your colocation footprint throughout your transformation project supported by guidance, advice and practical assistance throughout your digital transformation journey.

Colocation offers numerous advantages that make it a compelling choice for businesses seeking to optimise their IT infrastructure:

  • First and foremost, it provides greater flexibility, allowing companies to scale their operations as needed without significant capital expenditure.
  • Additionally, colocation facilities are designed with high resilience and increased security in mind, ensuring your data remains safe and accessible.
  • Operating expenses (OpEx) and cost allocation become more predictable, enabling better financial planning.
  • The maintenance and service level agreements (SLAs) we provide mean you can rely on expert management and control, freeing up your internal resources.
  • The breadth of carrier and cloud connectivity options available guarantees robust and diverse network connections.
  • And, importantly, colocation gives you access to the latest technology, ensuring your business remains competitive and up to date.

Find out more

Our clients have identified our role as a trusted partner and provider of data centre services as a key success factor in their transformation activities. Get in touch to find out how Datum can support your digital transformation journey.

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Datum doesn’t go on holiday – reliability and resilience all year round

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Summertime, and the living is easy ....?

When the great summer slowdown begins, the holiday mood takes over for many and attention turns to summer escapes. But the summer break isn’t always the most relaxing time for IT teams who can’t shed the fear that a major IT incident may occur during their absence – nothing takes the sheen off a day at the beach like the simmering dread of calls from beleaguered colleagues and clients announcing service disruption and the need for urgent action.

Relax ... we've got your back

Risks to critical IT real estate come in many forms; from physical or cyber security breaches and hardware or software failure, to natural disasters, but some risks are particularly prevalent during the summer. Thankfully, IT leads who have partnered with Datum can rest easy knowing that equipment and workloads are as well looked after at this time of the year as at any other.

Summer – a wolf in sheep’s clothing?

Most of us look forward to summer with eager anticipation after the dark and cold that preceded it. But our changing climate means that summer can bring so much more than longer days and clement weather – it increasingly means periods of excessive heat, followed by storms and heavy rainfall. This is problematic for IT facilities, which are very sensitive to heat and moisture.

A new record-high temperature for the UK of 40.3ºC was recorded at Coningsby in Lincolnshire on the 19 July 2022, and hot weather events are associated with lightning strikes during and flash flooding in parts of the country. A UK Climate Resilience Programme report projects that the number of extremely hot days in the UK could increase four-fold, jumping up from around 10 days per year today to 37 days. This is not great news for those involved in the storage and maintenance of business-critical IT equipment and workloads.

Power outages are particularly common during heatwaves due to summer storms and the need for cooling systems to run on overdrive to maintain the correct ambient temperature. The equipment in data centres generates a significant amount of heat, so cooling (which itself generates heat) is the life support of the data centre environment. But the combination of heat within the data centre and sky-high outdoor temperatures can cause electrical equipment to become overloaded, which is why summer constitutes ‘power outage season’.

Furthermore, torrential downpours are common following periods of hot weather, and it is no longer unusual for some areas of the country to be hit by a month’s worth of rainfall (or more) in a few hours. Flash floods are an obvious risk to any IT facility that finds itself in a vulnerable location, but water can also accumulate through condensation or humidity in warmer weather and can lead to corrosion and degradation of devices and cables.

But don’t cancel your holiday just yet - we’ve got it all in hand ….

There are so many benefits of partnering with Datum; benefits that are relevant at any time of the year, not just during the summer slow-down:

  • Rigorously tested data centre infrastructure to prevent problems occurring.
  • The luxury of infrastructure redundancy – power, cooling and data back-up.
  • Energy efficient cooling to reduce water and power consumption.
  • Resilience. Our fully 2N power and highly resilient infrastructure exceed the requirements of Tier 3 and are backed by a 100% uptime SLA – vital reassurance for clients whose businesses need to be operational 24x7x365.
  • System monitoring and engineering services (including emergency response) to monitor power loads and system functionality and act quickly in case issues arise.
  • Security. Our security approach and processes across our facilities have been designed to meet the requirements of industry-recognised certifications including ISO 27001, PCI DSS, BS5979, NSI Gold and Police-Assured Secure Facilities (PASF).

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All this means that holidaying IT teams can rest assured that we have got it all in hand. To find out how you can make your summer break more relaxing next year by handing over the responsibility of your IT real estate and workloads to Datum, get in touch.

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Managing IT costs through colocation's OpEx model

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CapEx and OpEx – why choose one over the other?

Many businesses prefer the OpEx model because it allows for ongoing operating expenditures that can be planned for month on month. This makes them easier to budget, which is also why many companies are moving from a model of hardware and software ownership to a software as a service (SaaS) model. OpEx expenditures are also attractive because ‘leasing’ costs paid as part of daily business operations are tax deductible, whilst not all up-front purchases are.

Increasingly, companies are faced with a combination of static and fluctuating IT costs, a significant proportion of which can be easily mitigated through colocation. Colocation can provide a good balance between CapEx and OpEx because it allows companies to choose to retain ownership of some IT infrastructure whilst benefiting from everything colocation has to offer (security; power and cooling; secure, low-latency connectivity; greater network redundancy; access to multiple carriers, etc.) without the enormous capital expenditure required for a scalable in-house IT storage facility.

The (hybrid) cloud within the CapEx/OpEx model

Cloud computing shifts IT spend to a pay-as-you-go model and has obvious financial benefits (reduced hardware costs) and operational advantages (agility). Companies using the public cloud pay only OpEx for ongoing services (the service provider made the original CapEx investment), whilst those using the private cloud have made the initial CapEx investment and can potentially pass resources to users and departments on an OpEx basis.
Datum’s hybrid cloud solution allows companies to house business-critical IT real estate, applications and workloads in their own private clouds and our highly secure facility, whilst choosing to store other workloads in the public cloud. And because our services are run on an OpEx basis, and we have already made a significant investment in a highly secure data centre, our clients are spared the CapEx outlay. Furthermore, in addition to the CapEx savings, our clients can benefit from the excellent relationships we have formed with partners listed in our Datum Connect partner directory who offer services to augment our colocation offering, including connectivity, cloud and managed services.

Datum’s colocation offering - an ideal OpEx solution

Setting up and running in-house data centres is a very costly proposition comprising high set-up and infrastructure costs and significant ongoing costs (e.g. power, cooling, security). In order to ensure that these CapEx investments are worthwhile, predictions need to be made about the potential need for more space further down the line. If growth targets are not met, companies can find themselves with more space than they need and if they are exceeded, companies may find that they have under-invested and have insufficient room to flex. Benefiting from our colocation services and additional services as an OpEx expense allows our clients to scale their solutions month-by-month based on business requirements.

But don’t just take our word for it …

We are proud of the relationships with have with our clients; relationships that are based on flexibility, partnership and collaboration. Here are just some of the comments our clients have made about us:

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Would you like to find out how we can support your business growth and digital transformation plans? Get in touch to speak to a member of our team, or book a tour of our facility.

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Rethinking the cloud-first strategy for enterprise IT

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Rethinking the cloud-first strategy for enterprise IT

In today’s digital age, the term ‘cloud-first’ has become a buzzword among enterprise IT leaders. While the advantages of cloud computing – such as scalability, cost efficiency, and flexibility – are well-documented, it’s essential to question whether an exclusive cloud-first strategy is always the best solution. For many enterprises, a hybrid approach that combines cloud and colocation data centres may offer a more balanced and resilient strategy.

The allure of cloud-first

The cloud-first approach has its merits:

  • Scalability: Businesses can easily scale their operations up or down based on demand.
  • Cost efficiency: Pay-as-you-go models can help avoid upfront capital expenditures.
  • Flexibility: Access data and applications from anywhere at any time.

Despite these benefits, the cloud is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Enterprises must consider where their critical applications are hosted and whether the inherent risks are worth the perceived convenience.

The risks of exclusive cloud-first approaches

While it might seem straightforward to migrate all workloads to the cloud, an exclusive cloud-first strategy can expose enterprises to several risks:

  • Single point of failure: Relying solely on cloud providers can create a single point of failure in the event of outages. The recent Microsoft Windows IT outage, caused by a CrowdStrike software update, serves as a poignant reminder of this vulnerability. This incident caused significant disruption, particularly across the US, and occurred not long after an outage on Microsoft’s Azure cloud service system, which highlighted the vulnerabilities inherent in relying heavily on cloud-based solutions. Public cloud is so interconnected that a simple faulty update like this one can easily propagate to affect everyone. When critical systems are affected, the repercussions can be severe, underscoring the importance of a more balanced and resilient approach to IT infrastructure.
  • Security concerns: Security breaches can occur despite robust measures, and data sovereignty issues might arise depending on the cloud provider’s location.
  • Latency issues: Applications requiring real-time processing may suffer from latency problems when hosted purely in the cloud.
  • Cost: Although it’s true that a cloud-first strategy reduces capital expenditure, rising costs have meant that many cloud models are now becoming unaffordable, and in some cases, the cap-ex investment of a colocation infrastructure can be more affordable in the long run as assets are sweated.

The case for hybrid workloads

A more nuanced approach involves hybrid workloads, combining the best of both worlds – cloud and colocation data centres. Hybrid models allow enterprises to:

  • Spread risk: Diversify their infrastructure to mitigate risks such as outages and data breaches.
  • Optimise performance: Host latency-sensitive applications closer to end users in colocation centres.
  • Enhance security: Maintain control over critical data and applications with enhanced physical security measures.

Colocation data centres as a winning solution

Colocation data centres offer a platform for digital transformation by providing a middle ground between on-premise and cloud environments. They allow enterprises to:

  • Leverage infrastructure: Benefit from state-of-the-art facilities without the significant capital investment.
  • Ensure compliance: Meet regulatory requirements with enhanced physical and data security measures.
  • Facilitate hybrid models: Seamlessly integrate with existing cloud services to optimise workload distribution.

For a deeper understanding of how a hybrid approach can benefit your enterprise, or how colocation data centres can be the platform for your digital transformation, book a consultation with our experts today.

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Digital transformation - is it on your agenda?

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The need for digital transformation

Right now, corporate IT is under pressure from all areas to transform operations and deliver more agile solutions to meet competitive forces and to achieve key business objectives. Why? Advances in technology, digitisation, budgetary pressures, globalisation… the list goes on.

Due to these pressures, most companies are engaged in or contemplating digital transformation at either a tactical or strategic level.

The key role played by data centres

The data centre, it seems, is at the heart of the shift. Partly, this has come about due to necessity. With budgets in many sectors tighter than ever, building and updating large computing facilities is an expensive, CAPEX-laden exercise that many organisations can no longer afford – and quite frankly, even if they could, it isn’t the best use of their budget.

There are many positive reasons however for making the change. Renting rack space from a colocation provider, for example, is a very cost-efficient way to make provisions for growth without overspending on building, maintaining and powering your own facility. It’s flexible, easy to scale and there’s no IT maintenance burden.

This sort of approach, coupled with greater use of cloud services, can help you to enable new delivery models, be much more agile and cut your carbon footprint. It can also significantly bolster your business in terms of security, resilience and disaster recovery.

So, with all these benefits on offer, why are some organisations holding back?

Some organisations remain reticent about giving up their on premise data centres, seemingly because they’re worried about the level of service they’ll receive from their colo or cloud provider when they make the move.

We know from over a decade of working with our colocation clients that one of the biggest hurdles our clients need to overcome is the fear of making the wrong choice of provider. Many were initially worried about putting their faith in an outside organisation to protect their business-critical infrastructure and workloads, and, on top of that, they were worried about the transition process and the level of support they would get throughout it.

The proof is in the pudding

If that sounds at all familiar, it’s well worth taking a moment to look at our case studies, which highlight some of the key challenges faced by our clients, and how we overcame them. Some talk about their need:

  • to flex both up and down over the lifetime of the contract in terms of power, space and footprint;
  • to have short term access to additional space and power, when required;
  • to find an environmentally efficient data centre solution;
  • to access to multiple cloud platforms and carriers.

And, crucially, they provide insight – direct from our clients – about the level of service and support you should be able to expect from your colocation partner during the transition.

Find out more

Are you thinking about a technology transformation for your organisation? If so, contact us today to discuss your business objectives. We’ll be happy to explain both how you can achieve them, and what kind of support you can expect from us to help you on your journey.

To download a presentation on digital transformation and the key themes in this post, visit: Embarking on a digital transformation journey – what you need to know.

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Ensuring your data centre strategy stands the test of time

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Predicting the future

Let’s face it, data centres are very different places compared to what they were just ten years ago. So looking forward another ten years, is it possible to say what your future strategy needs to be?

Looking forward, businesses will continue to be much more driven by the way they use data, which will transform the way they think about data centre management and how it supports their business model. These expectations are going to keep shifting forward with the momentum provided by big data, cloud computing, AI, and other technology trends.

The principles of a data centre strategy

With so much change going on, is it really going to be possible to nail down a data centre strategy that’s adaptable enough to cope with future change? We believe it is. But to get there, you need to think more broadly than many people currently do and design a strategy built on three key foundations – infrastructure, people and future-proofing.

1. Start with your data centre infrastructure

In our experience, it’s always best to start creating your strategy by analysing your current infrastructure and how it supports both present and future business objectives.

These investigations will reveal where additional investment is required to bring infrastructure up to scratch and deliver on what the business needs. However, you also need to consider that in the longer term your strategy is also likely to focus on consolidating hardware and software to reduce costs (without compromising resilience of course).

This is a difficult balancing act. However, a thorough and well documented audit of your infrastructure (with proper business context) will help you identify inefficiencies that need to be addressed. At the same time, it will help you find ways you can ‘invest to save’ to make those long-term cost reductions realistic. This approach allows you to create a data centre strategy that keeps on delivering for the organisation year after year.

2. Find the right team and level of support

Increasing levels of automation and resilience mean that modern day data centres are much less resource intensive from a day-to-day management perspective. But people and their skills are still very important. In fact, organisations are increasingly finding that while they need fewer foot soldiers, they still need access to specialist knowledge to keep pace with their growing infrastructure complexity.

The solution often means looking outside the business for additional advice and guidance. Your choice of partners across the board is crucial, because you’ll need to make sure the ones you choose are capable of helping create a strategy that can deliver what the business needs in the long term while simultaneously consolidating and reducing costs.

In addition, it’s a good idea to make sure these third parties are interested in working alongside you, your engineers and end users to uncover what their real needs are. Only this way will you deliver a rounded data centre strategy that fits the business and is not driven purely by technology or vendor road maps.

3. Future-proofing and flexibility

‘Disruption’ is now affecting virtually every industry (think Uber, Amazon and Airbnb). Data centre strategies therefore need to have core flexibility to help businesses respond to new competitors and threats. But businesses can’t just go wild. At the same time, they need to keep finance happy by accurately calculating budget over the course of five years or more.

This means including provisions for upgrades in the most cost-effective way. It also means asking yourself some very important questions. Will you follow OEM-defined refresh cycles, for example, or is there a plan that better fits your business needs? And how will that plan be applied across multiple sites?

It’s absolutely vital that future business plans are built around the ability to streamline these upgrades seamlessly. But if your strategy does not deal with outdated systems correctly, you risk ‘technical bankruptcy’ meaning you simply cannot afford to replace or upgrade legacy systems. For any business that is serious about the future, this is simply not an option.

An agile data centre strategy for tomorrow's needs

The speed at which technology develops may make it seem like long-term strategies are redundant. But the reality is that your organisation has long-term goals and these have a direct bearing on your plans for the data centre.

We help organisations achieve a long-term data centre strategy through colocation. We help them consolidate costs and infrastructure, offering flexible contracts that support any changes brought on by the transformation project, give them agility to cope with future expansion/upgrades and provide business-led expertise focused on supporting both present and future goals.

Our experts are always on hand to take you through how we can help you as part of your IT transformation projects and build an effective long-term data centre strategy. Contact us today to find out more.

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Business continuity and disaster recovery safely in our hands

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Changing times

If the years since the beginning of the pandemic have shown us anything, it’s that business disruption can occur at any time and that not all disruption can be predicted; we have recently lived through one of the biggest periods of disruption in the post-war era and it came, seemingly, from nowhere. The pandemic has also emphasised business’ increasing dependence on digital technologies and has highlighted the importance of business continuity and disaster recovery to protect organisations against disruption.

Business continuity – the show must go on

Business continuity is a proactive process of putting protocols in place to ensure that all mission-critical aspects of an organisation can continue operating in the face of a disruptive event (including technology, applications, IT processes, data and business facilities). Even the smallest amount of downtime can have a profoundly negative impact on a business so all organisations should have a business continuity plan in place to cover anything from flooding and IT disruption to supplier issues, although most would probably admit that a global pandemic didn’t form part of that plan … until it happened.

Why disaster recovery is important

Disaster recovery is more reactive than business continuity and, in many ways, an element of it. A disaster recovery plan identifies specific steps that need to be taken when technology is disrupted after an incident (e.g. natural disasters, cyber attacks, IT failures). It assumes that the primary site is not functional for a period of time and involves the identification of critical IT systems and networks, and the documentation of steps to restart and reconfigure systems and networks. Many organisations don’t have a disaster recovery plan in place, or don’t sufficiently test the ones they have, which puts them in a very vulnerable position.

Protecting our clients from disruption

Organisations that have on premise IT have complete responsibility for ensuring the safety of servers, IT estate and data, including data back-up. So, if a major incident occurs, they need to keep things running and reinstate activities themselves, and they must fight on many fronts to protect their operations. As dependence on technology increases, off premise data centres will play an ever greater role in business continuity.

Many companies struggled to access their on-site IT at the height of the pandemic, which caused significant issues, particularly for those with disparate IT set up across various buildings and locations. Our clients, however, experienced little or no impact on the management of their IT infrastructure. They were still able to access their IT as before, or take advantage of our remote engineering services if they were unable to come on site, for whatever reason, which was a real benefit, according to Ian Mace, Data Centre Manager at our south east site:

Because we deal with risk assessment and risk management every day, we have robust disaster recovery and business continuity protocols in place, and any business that has moved its IT infrastructure and workloads to our facility is protected by those. These protocols cover any potential disruption including IT-related (outage, cyber breach), natural disaster, supply chain disruption, and interruption to utility supply. We have the capacity to undertake rigorous testing to prevent issues occurring, as well as infrastructure redundancy (power, cooling and data back-up), resilient infrastructure that exceeds the requirements of Tier 3, and a 100% uptime SLA for complete peace of mind. Our clients also have the added advantage of being able to tap into the broad range of services offered by our partner network, which makes them more resilient and able to act quickly when needs are identified.

Find out how we can help

Disaster recovery and business continuity are two significant reasons given by our clients behind the decision to locate their business-critical IT and workloads in our colocation facilities, and it’s easy to see why; taking advantage of our robust disaster recovery and business continuity processes is a much more cost effective and reliable way of ensuring that your organisation isn’t negatively impacted by unforeseen disruption. To find out more about protecting and future-proofing your operations through colocation, get in touch or book a tour of our Farnborough facility.

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Making the move to colocation: time for change?

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Seeing the need

When your business is growing and changing, shouldn’t your IT infrastructure do the same? Sometimes the pace of change is so rapid that managing IT systems is about just delivering what’s needed to function, when really, you need to future-proof and position your business for growth. While colocation is often the ideal choice for businesses in this position, it may not always be clear that the need for increased agility and productivity means that a change from the current IT set up is needed.

Five clues that signify the need for change

Clue #1: Disparate IT infrastructure

As businesses expand and change, it is not unusual to find the IT infrastructure is spread out across a number of locations. At times it can seem acceptable to maintain such diversity, but a widespread infrastructure can become difficult to manage, inhibiting the corporate infrastructure from properly supporting future growth plans. The lack of control over your IT systems and the need to manage multiple premises with, in all likelihood, different set ups can make any attempts to undertake activities such as upgrading systems incredibly time-consuming. By consolidating your IT estate through a colocation provider, you can achieve management efficiencies and reduce costs in the long-term.

Clue #2: Planning for the future

Future-proofing your IT infrastructure comes down to anticipating the level and speed of growth your business will go through, and what systems are needed to support this. Typically, when businesses grow, and they’ve not provisioned their IT to grow with them, it puts pressure on the existing IT infrastructure. Ideally, you need a solution that can help you scale your IT requirements as you grow. A colocation solution can provide this level of flexibility to match your levels of growth and expansion.

Clue #3: Considering hybrid solutions

Businesses that are considering moving their IT off-premise often have concerns about the risk of storing critical applications and data in a public cloud. But moving IT off-premise does not always mean everything needs to go into the cloud. Many data centre providers offer cloud connectivity that can enable you to benefit from the security and scalability of colocation along with the flexibility and accessibility of a cloud solution. It’s the best of both worlds.

Clue #4: Data security fears

Businesses need to be able to demonstrate that they have systems and measures in place to protect the data they hold on their customers and partners. If your IT is off-premise in multiple locations, it becomes challenging to know which data is where, and to ensure you have access at any time with consistent security measures in place. Colocation can provide a secure and reliable solution that brings all your IT infrastructure under one roof.

Clue #5: Concerns around reliability

When thinking about your business-critical data and applications, the thought of the system going down is enough to keep you up at night. And if your IT is managed in multiple locations, how can you standardise an appropriate plan of action in the event that you experience any downtime? This lack of reliability can cause a real headache, which is why at Datum we offer clients a guaranteed 100% uptime SLA and a full range of other facility protocols that are there to minimise risk in the event of an emergency.

Ready to explore colocation?

Choosing the right colocation partner starts with understanding what challenges you face. Whether it’s a lack of reliability, concerns over security or the need to grow and prepare for the future, these are all signs that it’s time to upgrade your IT infrastructure.

Colocation data centres are the ideal hybrid between a cloud and an on-premise solution. See how we can support you in resolving your current and future IT infrastructure challenges by getting in touch with our team who will happily answer your questions.

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Why HPC-ready data centres are a game-changer for the higher education sector

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It's all change...

In the hallowed halls of higher education institutions, the once bulky and cavernous data centres that powered the information infrastructure within universities are being reimagined and reshaped.

HPC needs in higher education

Higher education, with its vast research projects and repositories of personal and academic data, has always relied heavily on robust IT infrastructure. This infrastructure, often maintained and operated by on-campus IT departments, becomes quickly outdated as technology continues to evolve at a breakneck pace.

The rise in the need for high-performance computing (HPC) as a tool for research and innovation in the higher education sector – technology that facilitates everything from complex simulations and data analysis to machine learning and artificial intelligence – means that many higher education institutions find themselves grappling with the challenge of providing the necessary infrastructure to support it.

Understanding the world of HE data centres

Higher education institutions face several significant challenges when it comes to managing their data centres effectively:

  • Ensuring the security and privacy of sensitive data, such as student records and research findings, in an increasingly complex threat landscape.
  • Keeping pace with the rapidly growing demand for computing resources and storage capacity while working within tight budgetary constraints.
  • Maintaining high levels of reliability and availability to support mission-critical operations, often with limited IT staff.

The evolution of colocation services for the HE sector

HPC-ready colocation data centres grant universities access to high-quality data centre infrastructure without the astronomical costs of maintenance and operation. By partnering with off-premise data centres, universities can access state-of-the-art HPC infrastructure without the need for significant upfront investment or in-house expertise.

Cost-efficiency

By sharing costs with other tenants at a colocation facility, universities can significantly reduce their capital expenditure and only pay for the resources they use, which is a vital factor, especially for institutions often operating on tight budgets.

Scalability and flexibility

Colocation facilities offer the ability to easily scale up or down as computing needs change, ensuring that universities can keep pace with the often unpredictable demands of education and research.

Enhanced reliability and security

The provision of significant redundancy and robust security measures means that colocation services can often provide a more reliable and secure environment for data storage and processing than many universities could afford to implement on their own.

Access to specialised expertise

We have relationships with external providers of diverse managed services, giving universities access to a suite of expert skills without needing to expand their in-house teams. (See Datum Connect.)

The road ahead for data centres in HE

Data centres are the unseen enablers supporting the mammoth task of knowledge creation and dissemination within HE. As higher education institutions evolve, innovate and grow, colocation offers a unique opportunity to leverage the benefits of modern infrastructure without forfeiting the crucial components of control and security that are integral to academic integrity. This is a compelling solution, enabling universities to access state-of-the-art HPC infrastructure without the need for significant upfront investment or in-house expertise, whilst affording universities the opportunity to overcome the challenges of cost, complexity, scalability, and reliability, and focus on what they do best.

How can we help?

Looking for state-of-the-art HPC-ready data centre infrastructure without the need for significant upfront investment or in-house expertise?

Talk to us today about your data centre requirements!

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Getting reconnected with the Manchester tech community

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Our spring event

Last week our spring business tech networking event took place in Manchester, with professionals from across the industry coming together to connect, collaborate and catch up on what’s new in our community.

Same successful formula ... different scenery

This time, we took Get Reconnected to a new venue – Banyan, Spinningfields – where we were joined by delegates from the worlds of data centre, engineering and infrastructure, internet, networking, connectivity providers and telecoms.

Our event was sponsored by The London Internet Exchange (LINX), a leading global provider of interconnections solutions and peering with key hubs across the UK, US, Middle East and Africa. Datum’s Manchester data centre has been a Manchester PoP (Point of Presence) for LINX since 2019.

The relaxed event began with drinks, a brief introduction from Datum and our sponsor, followed by great food, great conversation and a few more drinks.

What our guests had to say

Our Get Reconnected tech business networking events have been running for a year now and are becoming increasingly popular with each event. We keep these events relaxed, with no sales tactics or business referrals, just casual business networking for technical and business professionals.

“The Get Reconnected events are a great way to get to know the tech and engineering community around Manchester better, in a relaxed and social environment. We’ve had some great conversations with both existing LINX members and those new to LINX networks and hope to be able to support these events again in the future.”

Lynsey Buckingham – Partner Marketing & Communications Specialist (London Internet Exchange Limited (LINX) – our May 2024 event sponsor)

“… an outstanding experience. The event was impeccably organised, bringing together a diverse group of industry professionals at the forefront of data centre technology. I managed to meet with a couple of consultants and a prospective suppliers at the event. The wider networking opportunities were also valuable, allowing me to connect with peers, exchange ideas, and explore potential collaborations. Overall, the event exceeded my expectations and provided a wealth of knowledge and connections that will be beneficial to my work. I highly recommend this event to anyone involved in the data centre industry.”

Matt Preece – Territory Sales Manager; Piller Power Systems

These events bring together industry experts, data centre managers and tech enthusiasts. We discussed everything from energy-efficient cooling solutions to data security protocols. Datum’s team facilitated meaningful conversations, fostering collaboration and knowledge sharing. Whether you’re a seasoned data centre pro or just starting out, Datum’s networking events are a must-attend. Kudos to Datum for creating a platform where innovation thrives!

Keith Bennett – Associate Director (CBRE Data Centre Solutions)

Our next event will take place in September. If you would like to sign up to our events mailing list to receive updates on future events, you can register here.

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