Data centre consolidation marches on. But what’s best for clients?

Ballooning data volumes and the growth of cloud computing are causing the data centre sector to grow exponentially. Alongside this growth, the data centre landscape is also going through significant change, predominantly due to increased competition and developing technologies such as cloud and edge computing that are affecting customer expectations. 

In a bid to remain competitive, seek scale, and broaden the markets they address, some data centre providers are joining forces in order to pool experience and service offerings. One recent high-profile example of this consolidation was the strategic acquisition of Interxion (a European data centre provider) by Digital Realty Trust (one of the largest data centre operators in the US). This is by no means the only recent consolidation and is evidence of quickening consolidation at the top end of the market.

In contrast to this model, Datum, as a retail colocation provider, offers a completely different proposition. Our clients (including FTSE 250 and Fortune 500 companies) can be small, large and anywhere in between. What unites them is their desire for a well-engineered infrastructure that is comparable to that offered by the top-end hyperscale providers, but with one significant difference – a completely different working relationship. 

Datum’s relationship with its enterprise clients is so much more than a landlord-tenant-type arrangement. Instead, it is based on an ongoing partnership and client-focused service geared towards enterprises that are developing and transitioning – at its most basic level this means access to leading edge technologies and 24 x 7 x 365 dedicated data centre management, but above and beyond this it means flexibility in terms of approach and contracts (no fixed-term contracts to tie clients in and the ability to easily scale server capacity up or down as needed), the provision of additional services (either though our on-site staff or through our network of partners) to assist companies with their IT transformation and growth plans, and service management for transparency and accountability. 

Our ethos is based on partnering with our clients in order to tailor a colocation service that is suited to their unique business needs and future growth plans. We know that nothing is set in stone and that requirements change, so our service is set up to accommodate this. Whilst we work with our enterprise clients to create the bespoke solutions required by their IT teams, we offer our service provider clients a top-quality service-managed platform that they can rely on and confidently recommend to their customer base, over which they can layer their own services. And flexibility is at the heart of everything we do. In the words of Ensono, one of our highly valued clients:

It is clear that Datum stands out in the data centre market, sharing our ethos for exceptional client service, and providing us with secure, resilient and scalable data centre solutions and account management that is the right fit to support our trusted managed IT services.