Gartner has suggested that businesses should have only two data centres per continent for major business activity, saying it would offer them cost savings and optimised service delivery.
According to the research firm, the majority of global organisations have too many data centres in too many countries, which is claimed to slow their ability to respond quickly to business changes.
Gartner research vice president Rakesh Kumar said it’s a fact that most global organisations run too many data centres. “This is normally the result of business expansion, either organically or through acquisition over many years,” Kumar said.
“While the logic of business growth makes sense, having too many data centres results in excessive capital and operational costs, an overly complex architecture and, in many cases, a lack of business-IT agility.”
The research firm also revealed that the majority of firms have stated that having too many data centres does reduce their agility.
“The twin data centre topology provides many benefits, such as allowing for an adequate level of disaster recovery,” Kumar added.
“This can be through an active/active configuration where each data centre splits the production and development work and can fail over the load of the other site in the event of a disaster.”
“However, this presupposes a synchronous copy of data and, so, a physical separation of about 60 to 100 miles. This may be too risky for certain industries, such as banking and government security, and so a third site may be required.”
The latest dual site approach is also anticipated to enable the central IT organisation to better supervise data centre operations as the number of sites is limited.
“By adopting this dual centre approach wherever possible, the whole growth strategy will incorporate a belief system that will help to create an optimum data centre topology.”
