Businesses advised to assess strategy before leasing or building IT data centres - IDC forum

Zeineldin's remarks came as part of his presentation 'Data Centres: Lease versus Build?' at the IDC's IT Managers Forum and Expo 2009. Titled 'Making IT Matter: Finding Opportunities and Defining Values', the event at Atlantis - The Palm in Dubai witnessed some of the most influential industry experts from across the region showcasing ways on becoming a smart IT buyer under current economic conditions.

Highlighting the cost benefits with a financial model, Zeineldin examined the present scenario of data centres in the region, the key concerns that end users and service providers experience, and the main challenges of building and managing data centers in-house versus those that are leased to external managed IT service providers.

Zeineldin said:

"It is vital to understand that end-user demands differ from one organization to another. While some organizations focus on ensuring that IT aligns with the overall business strategy, others spend more time on investing in applications that deliver results most efficiently. A decision to lease or build your own data centres will be determined by the CEOs and CFOs of a company who will examine the capital expenditure, cash flow and the net present value of the business."

Zeineldin added, "The global downturn has put further pressure on businesses to reduce capital investments on IT, yet they are required to find ways to deliver a high level of service to end-users. This is the reason for considering a shift from managing the entire IT infrastructure internally vis-a-vis leasing portions or all of the IT services to a managed services provider."

Zeineldin pointed out that up to 70-75% of time is spent by the IT department on managing day to day technical operations including workplace, security, patch and change, network and bandwidth, application and storage management issues. In leasing an organization's Data Centre to a managed services provider, he outlined how businesses should relieve themselves of non-core activities whereby the CIO and his team should focus on business processes and understanding how IT can align with the business to maximize profitability, rather than focus on daily operational responsibilities.

Zeineldin added, "IT management can be a difficult and unappreciated job whereby the IT department is expected to always do 'more with less'. Leasing IT services to a leading managed IT services provider like eHosting DataFort offers predictable service fees and no capital expenditure. At the same time, we are strongly committed to complying with our service-level agreements that cater to individual business requirements, regularly adopting the latest technologies that allow faster response and increased time to market."

"With access to a pool of skilled resources, customers have greater confidence in the IT operations we provide, as they are assured that our industry standards can guarantee them better security and confidentiality of data," he stated.

Zeineldin also noted the factors that customers need to consider before committing to a managed services provider. These include the experience and financial stability, depth of service portfolio and compliance to international standards and processes.

The IDC report released at the Dubai forum projected that while economic conditions will have impacted the IT budget this year where IT spending is estimated at minus 8.2%, research shows signs of optimism estimating an increase of up to 2.8% by May 2010 and a further 5.4% by 2011. The report also points to a huge demand for storage management services as figures reveal that 1,530 exabytes of enterprise information is expected to be produced by 2011, from only 342 exabytes in 2008.

A report from international consultancy McKinsey similarly points out the vast global demand for data centre services as evident from the high growth of Internet, where bandwidth capacity has doubled year on year since the mid 90s. Moreover, the Internet World Statistics report reveals that the total number of Internet users in the Arab world has reached 38 million, with the UAE registering the highest penetration rate at 49.8% of the population followed by Qatar at 34.8% and Bahrain at 34.7%.

With world-class data centres, resilient and scalable infrastructure and round-the-clock managed operations, eHosting DataFort has established itself as a market leader in the field of managed services, while having a wide network of technology and channel partners within the GCC/Mena regions, Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.